Earlier in the year, Roger Pielke Jr. was named as a contributing writer for Nate Silver’s newly re-launched FiveThirtyEight site. Shortly after that, Pielke, a climate policy scholar and political scientist at the University of Colorado, in Boulder, published an article at FiveThirtyEight headlined, “Disasters Cost More Than Ever–But Not Because of Climate Change.”

I recently conducted a Q & A with Pielke about this episode and the aftermath. The links in my questions are from me. I asked Pielke to provide his own links.

KK: It’s been noted on Twitter that you are not listed on the main contributors page for FiveThirthyEight. Does this mean you no longer write for the site? If so, can you explain what happened?

RPJR: That is correct, I no longer write for 538. Last month, after 538 showed some reluctance in continuing to publish my work, I called up Mike Wilson, the lead editor there, and told him that it was probably best that we part ways. I wished them well in their endeavor going forward. I remain a fan. Since then I have joined up with SportingIntelligence, a UK-based website that focuses on analyses of economic and other quantitative aspects of sport. It’s a great fit. And of course, I continue to publish in places like USA Today and the Financial Times on a wide range of subjects

KK: What do you make of the uproar your FiveThirtyEight piece generated? I know it quickly degenerated into an ugly pile-on, which I and some other journalists found unseemly. But did critics have any legitimate points you want to acknowledge?

RPJR: Well, that first piece was written on a subject that I have written on many times before (and perhaps as much as anyone) – disasters and climate change. The short essay was perfectly consistent with the recent assessments of the IPCC. The fact that some folks didn’t like it was not surprising — most anything on climate change is met with derision by somebody. What was a surprise was the degree to which the negative response to the piece was coordinated among some activist scientists, journalists and social media aficionados. I think that took everyone by surprise. I learned some new things about certain colleagues and journalists — both really good things and some really pathetic things. Seeing a campaign organized to have me fired from 538 also taught me a lesson about the importance of academic tenure.

KK: If you could write the piece over again, what would you do differently, if anything?

RPJR: Looking back, probably the main thing I would do differently would be to simply not write about climate change at 538. When I was originally hired there was actually zero discussion about me focusing on climate or even science, but rather covering a wide range of topics. I made clear to Nate and Mike that I was looking to at least partially escape from the climate change wars by focusing on other issues. The climate change piece was an obvious place to start even so because the IPCC reports had just been released and the topic is also covered so thoroughly in the peer reviewed literature. Clearly, that judgment was wrong!

KK: Have you and Nate Silver talked about this ordeal? What was his reaction?

RPJR: I have not spoken with or corresponded with Nate since that first piece. Of course, I do wish that 538 had shown a bit more editorial backbone, but hey, it is his operation. If a widely published academic cannot publish on a subject which he has dozens of peer-reviewed papers and 1000s of citations to his work, what can he write on? Clearly Nate is a smart guy, and I suspect that he knows very well where the evidence lies on this topic. For me, if the price of playing in the DC-NYC data journalism world is self-censorship for fear of being unpopular, then it is clearly not a good fit for any academic policy scholar.

KK: The condemnation of your 538 piece quickly spiraled into ugly personal broadsides painting you (incorrectly) as a climate skeptic. This happened in various high profile venues, such as Slate. How did you feel when this happened?

RPJR: If you are engaged in public debates on issues that people care passionately about, then you will be called names and worse. It goes with the territory. It is not pleasant of course, but at the same time, it is a pretty strong indication that (a) your arguments matter and (b) people have a hard time countering them on their merits. Even so, it is remarkable to see people like Paul Krugman and John Holdren brazenly make completely false claims in public about my work and my views. That they make such false claims with apparently no consequences says something about the nature of debate surrounding climate.

KK: You say you were surprised by “the degree to which the response to the piece was coordinated among some activist scientists, journalists and social media aficionados.” But this response did not happen in a vacuum, either. For years, your work–or more specifically–pointed statements you’ve made about the climate science establishment–have been heavily criticized by a number of outspoken climate scientists and widely read climate bloggers. Looking back, it appears that animosity directed towards you stems more from sharply-worded commentary on your blog and elsewhere, than your research.

For example, in his recently published book, “Reason in a Dark Time: Why the Struggle Against Climate Change Failed–and What it Means for Our Future,” NYU’s Dale Jamieson wrote about you. Here’s an excerpt that was posted at Salon:

In a 2010 book, Roger Pielke Jr. claimed that “[c]limate science is a fully politicized enterprise, desperately in need of reform if integrity is to be restored and sustained.” “Climategate,” the episode in November 2009 in which thousands of documents were stolen from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, revealed scientists “who saw themselves as much as activists as researchers,” … “plotting to corrupt the peer review system.” According to Pielke Jr., the theft exposed a “clique of activist scientists” engaged in a “coup against peer review.” He went on to accuse a broad range of scientists and public figures of trying to scare people into taking action on climate change or advocating such scare tactics.

One remarkable feature of Pielke Jr.’s discussion is its shrillness. “Clique,” “coup,” and “plotting” are the kinds of terms usually reserved for organized crime syndicates, terrorist organizations, and other conspiracies against the public good. The repeated use of the word “activist” mobilizes a characteristic trope of right-wing ideologues. The term is typically applied to judges, who like scientists are supposed to be neutral when carrying out their duties, but all too often, on this view, betray their professional responsibilities. Even someone who is sympathetic to the claim that political considerations sometimes find their way into climate science might shrink from Pielke Jr.’s characterization of climate science as “a fully politicized enterprise.”

Perhaps you take issue with how Jamieson has characterized your statements. But even still, he appears to have identified the reasons for much of the animosity towards you that has built up over the years. This is the larger context that I think informs the ugly brouhaha over your 538 piece. What are your thoughts on this?

RPJR: Anyone following these debates over the years and has observed whose arguments have actually been vindicated will no doubt understand why some of the louder critics of mine have resorted to bitter personal attacks. More generally, however, there is a common strategy of delegitimization used in the climate debates. It seems that labeling someone a “denier” offers a convenient excuse to avoid taking on arguments on their merits and to call for certain voices to be banished.

I’ve known Dale Jamison for about 25 years, dating back to the time that he was a philosophy professor at Colorado and NCAR. I have always got on well with him and learned a lot from him during the years that we were colleagues. I am perfectly comfortable with my claim that parts of the climate science field are indeed “fully politicized.” At the same time, as I have often said, there are many brilliant and hard-working scientists in the field. It just so happens that some of the most fervent ideologues find themselves in positions of authority. I don’t think that this is at all controversial.

What is controversial is the question whether the ends justify the means. That is to say, is the climate issue so important that we should look past issues of scientific integrity among those whose heart is in the right place? Jamieson suggests that we should:

“I’ve known Roger for a long time, and he’s done a lot of work that I respect. Part of why I called him out in the book is because he’s not a climate change denier. He’s somebody who knows better, but the rhetoric that he’s used against scientists and the exaggerations and the kind of personal fights that he’s gotten into around the issue have really distracted from the broad consensus that actually exists around doing something.”

First, I’m flattered to see that Dale thinks that my views are so influential so as to distract from a broad consensus. I’d just disagree with that conclusion. As I document with evidence in The Climate Fix, there is a very strong and stable consensus in the US and worldwide about doing something on climate. But more generally, should an academic really be measuring his arguments by who they favor in a political debate? Or should I call things like I see them? I’ve chosen to call things as I see them, and I am quite happy with that career choice.

Second, many of the public debates that I have been involved in are associated with efforts to discredit or misrepresent my own academic work. The 538 episode is just one such example. I document in my book an episode when back in 2001 a leading climate scientist asked me to underplay my work for political reasons. Not only do I believe this to be unethical, I also think that it will be counterproductive for those calling for action. Trying to trick policy makers or the public to believe that — say, disasters are getting worse because of climate change or that we have all the technologies we need for deep decarbonization — will only backfire in the end. I am a big fan of playing it straight with the science, because over the long term that reinforces public trust and leads to more reliable policy recommendations.

KK: I should say that I am in no way excusing or rationalizing the behavior of climate bloggers and others who have previously used slanderous language in an attempt to discredit you. But I guess what I getting at here is this: Do you feel in any way responsible for provoking the deep-seated anger directed at you over the years, which seems to have culminated in this mob-like attack on your reputation after publication of the 538 piece? I just wonder if you feel like, given the chance to go back in time, might you have phrased your own criticisms of the climate science community differently?

RPJR: It is a fair question. Hindsight is of course 20/20. But let’s say that all the criticisms Jamieson levies are accurate: I have been hard on some climate scientists. I have criticized some of their work in public, and even accused some of exploiting scientific authority for political ends. Sometimes I have used colorful language (“coup against peer review” — though for actual “shrillness” I would point Jamieson over to Joe Romm!). Some people have disagreed with my arguments. I have even been critical of the IPCC at times. Also, I have popularized my work on carbon pricing, decarbonization, energy, disasters, and the politicization of science. My work has occasionally been cited by the bad guys. I have also challenged claims that are seemingly widely accepted, but which my work shows to be wrong. I believe that policy debates deserve a plurality of voices, not a harmonization of views. I do not focus obsessively on the skeptics and deniers.

What part of the above would I change? Not much at all.

To be very clear, it is only a few climate scientists who have engaged in the “mob-like attacks” (it was actually mostly journalists and bloggers). Almost all the feedback I get from colleagues in climate science is overwhelmingly positive. Those climate scientists engaged in the climate debate are all big boys (mostly) and girls. If they cannot take the rough and tumble of public debate, then they should not be in public debate. There is “deep-seate anger” because of colorful language and apparent thin skins? Right. Tell me about it.

Ultimately, what I learned from the 538 episode is how small and insular the community of self-professed “climate hawks” actually is. Sure they made a lot of noise online and got John Stewart’s attention. But that was because of Nate Silver’s fame, not mine. Back in the real world, outside the climate blogosphere and the NY-DC data journalism circle virtually no one knew or much cared about the 538 brouhaha, even within academia. I found that encouraging.

I do wish the 538 folks all the best going forward. They were put in a difficult position. I have no hard feelings. There are some brilliant people there and they will no doubt have some great successes.

But in conclusion, let’s take a step back. Disaster losses continue to increase worldwide. Carbon dioxide continues to accumulate in the atmosphere. The world continues to demand ever more energy. Climate policies in place or proposed are not up to the task. In short, we need more ideas, more debate, more disagreement if we are to make intelligent progress. Efforts to demonize or silence unwelcome voices probably don’t move the dial very far on any of these issues Was this campaign to have me removed from 538 a victory for the climate movement? Was it the right battle to wage? I hope the climate hawks ask themselves these questions.

KK: I should say that I am in no way excusing or rationalizing the behavior of climate bloggers and others who have previously used slanderous language in an attempt to discredit you. But…
In other words, Kloor IS excusing and rationalizing. Rhetorically, that is what can be called the disingenuous ‘but.’ It acknowledges that the fact are on his opponents side, but….

CacheLaPoudre

Dude was railroaded for having politically incorrect views based on facts.

Tom Scharf

Good interview. It opened up a lot on things I was generally curious about and RPJ was as consistent on this subject as he has always been.

I’m biased here. Living in Florida the very first thing I looked into about climate was related to spiraling increases in homeowners insurance due to climate models predicting a sharp increase in hurricanes frequency and intensity. It didn’t take long to find RPJ’s blog and the statistical analysis and data on long term trends. There was a distinct difference in the actual trend data and how it was portrayed in the media and the insurance companies were happy to play along.

It’s always been my opinion that this “extreme events are already worse” meme was going to backfire. It is simply too easy to refute with data, and overstatements abound in the media. You would think credibility matters to some people, just apparently not the self elected climate leaders. Naturally they respond hostilely when their credibility is questioned.

My guess is RPJ probably single handedly brought sanity to the SREX report. And the latest IPCC AR5 was consistent with the SREX. I do enjoy directly quoting the IPCC every time this debate comes up, turning the consensus tables on its head so to say.

“Looking back, probably the main thing I would do differently would be to simply not write about climate change at 538″

…and here is yet another example of the toxicity of the climate debate. Many bloggers and journalists (including KK) has started to de-emphasize their climate coverage. It is easy to see how one would grow tired of playing in this swamp. It is repetitive, hostile, not career enhancing, and has devolved into a mentality of trench warfare using chemical weapons.

RPJ no longer writing on 538…who actually won here? Nobody. The loser is open scientific debate and science transparency. Diversity is not a prized goal in the climate debate.

“Based on process understanding and agreement in 21st century projections, it is likely that the global frequency of occurrence of tropical cyclones will either decrease or remain essentially unchanged, concurrent with a likely increase in both global mean tropical cyclone maximum wind speed and precipitation rates. The future influence of climate change on tropical cyclones is likely to vary by region, but the specific characteristics of the changes are not yet well quantified and there is low confidence in region-specific projections of frequency and intensity.”

and

“There is low confidence in the projections of future changes for the tropical Atlantic, both for the mean and interannual modes, because of systematic errors in model simulations of current climate. The implications for future changes in Atlantic hurricanes and tropical South American and West African precipitation are therefore uncertain.”

But they did in 2006 after a couple big hurricane years. They have since correctly walked it back (the data has forced them to…), but surely you remember the “hurricanes will increase in frequency and intensity” times, don’t you? Many people still repeat this.

AR4:

“Earlier studies assessed in the TAR showed that future tropical cyclones would likely become more severe with greater wind speeds and more intense precipitation. More recent modelling experiments have addressed possible changes in tropical cyclones in a warmer climate and generally confirmed those earlier results.”

It’s a bit long, but won the Pulitzer prize for investigative journalism in 2010. The re-insurer RMS dropped historical trends for disaster prediction and started using estimates from climate scientists, including Kerry Emanuel. *** Instant 45% increase in estimated major hurricane strikes ***.

“In the end, the four scientists came up with four hurricane estimates — similar only in that they were all above the historic average.”

“Thus, the long-term reality of 0.63 major hurricanes striking the U.S. every year yielded to a prediction of 0.90.”

Post-mortem is that the decade 2000-2010 ended up being right at the historical average of disaster damage, even given the two horrendous years in mid-decade. Hilariously after 2006 we haven’t even had one major hurricane strike in the US, the Al Gore effect I suppose. What the future holds is uncertain.

DavidAppell

The paragraph below the one you quoted (4AR WG1 CH10 section 10.3.6.3) says:

“A study with roughly 100-km grid spacing shows a decrease in tropical cyclone frequency globally and in the North Pacific but a regional increase over the North Atlantic and no significant changes in maximum intensity (Sugi et al., 2002). Yoshimura et al. (2006) use the same model but different SST patterns and two different convection schemes, and show a decrease in the global frequency of relatively weak tropical cyclones but no significant change in the frequency of intense storms…. Another global modelling study with roughly a 100-km grid spacing finds a 6% decrease in tropical storms globally and a slight increase in intensity, with both increases and decreases regionally related to the El Niño-like base state response in the tropical Pacific to increased greenhouse gases (McDonald et al., 2005). Another study with the same resolution model indicates decreases in tropical cyclone frequency and intensity but more mean and extreme precipitation from the tropical cyclones simulated in the future in the western north Pacific (Hasegawa and Emori, 2005).”

Then looking at another class of models, they write (pg 788):

“Thus, from this category of coarser-grid models that can only represent rudimentary aspects of tropical cyclones, there is
no consistent evidence for large changes in either frequency or intensity of these models’ representation of tropical cyclones, but there is a consistent response of more intense precipitation from future storms in a warmer climate.”

Compare the title to the details in the text. Emanuel again. It’s irrelevant what his track record is here. Standard fare.

CB

67% of Arctic sea ice has disappeared in the last 34 years. If you understand this sea ice is keeping sea surface temperatures lower, and if you understand warmer seas cause stronger storms, why wouldn’t you expect an increase in storm strength once Arctic sea ice disappears completely?

David Skurnick

While sea ice extent was shrinking in the Arctic, it was expanding to a record area in the Antarctic. Total sea ice is currently above the long term average. So, would you expect a reduction in Southern Hemisphere typhoons? I don’t recall people making such a prediction.

CB

“While sea ice extent was shrinking in the Arctic, it was expanding to a record area in the Antarctic… would you expect a reduction in Southern Hemisphere typhoons?”

Yes, sea ice is expanding in the Antarctic because the continent is melting down. Ice is moving from the land to the sea. I would expect a marked increase in typhoon activity once this ice disappears completely.

tomandersen

Why would land based ice in Antarctica melt more with an increase of even 5C (let alone 1). Its cold there.

The answer is of course that its not shrinking at all, or better put its within measurement error. “Overall, a recent estimate puts Antarctic net mass balance at -71 ± 53 gigatonnes per year”. In human terms that’s 0.

Its not even clear that Antarctica will add to or subtract from ocean levels over the next 100 years, as increased snowfall will offset melting.

S Graves

Oh please. Cite a single peer reviewed work that predicts that the AIS is going to melt down. There AREN’T ANY!! What absolute made up nonsense.

DavidAppell

You are confusing sea ice extent with volume. In fact, Arctic sea ice volume (or mass) is decreasing about 10 times faster than Antarctic se ice volume is expanding. That means global sea ice is decreasing quite rapidly, and is far below the long-term trend.

Michael Stone

You have bought into a myth spread by the corrupt Anthony Watts followers….

The freshwater land based ice on Antarctica is rapidly melting now.

As that freshwater enters the ocean around the continent of Antarctica it caused more winter sea ice to form than normally does as it is not saline as the ocean water is.

The increased ocean ice during the past three winters is mostly thin and rotten ice and melts off very quickly during it’s short summer season.

Yes I am aware that a ship was locked in ice there last winter, nothing unusual about that in the Southern Ocean, but the GW deniers try to have a field day with the issue.

Keep in mind that the Larson B ice shelf broke off of Antarctica in 2003, which was a wakeup call that we were entering a serious global warming trend.

David Skurnick

Michael, here are some responses to your comment.
1. I said Antarctic ice extent is at a record high. That is a fact, not a myth, regardless of any other characteristics of this ice. Note that ice extent is important because of ice’s reflectivity. Low ice extent in the Arctic tends to increase global warming, since less heat is radiated back. Similarly, high ice extent in the Antarctic tends to decrease GW.
2. I don’t know what you mean by “GW denier”, but I’m not one. I believe the globe has been warming and that man’s activity has contributed some amount the warming. I believe this is the view of most climate skeptics.
3. Do you have a link showing that the growth of Antarctic sea ice extent is being caused freshwater melt? In other words, is this a theory or an established fact? Also, did the IPCC or other climatologists predict in advance that Antarctic sea ice would grow to a record level?

Oh…and this is very inconvenient wrt your melt water claim and the increase in Antarctic SI.

ScienceDaily (Oct. 23, 2012) from a NASA study;

“Winds off the Ross Ice Shelf are getting stronger and stronger, and that causes the sea ice to be pushed off the coast, which generates areas of open water, polynyas,” said Josefino Comiso, a senior scientist at NASA Goddard. “The larger the coastal polynya, the more ice it produces, because in polynyas the water is in direct contact with the very cold winter atmosphere and rapidly freezes.” As the wind keeps blowing, the ice expands further to the north.”
Stoner…give these guys a call and get themstraightened out.

Swood1000

As that freshwater enters the ocean around the continent of Antarctica it caused more winter sea ice to form than normally does as it is not saline as the ocean water is.

Have you any idea how many Climate Deniers behave in this strange fashion?

If Climate Denialism weren’t a mental disorder, why should this be?

Swood1000

As that freshwater enters the ocean around the continent of Antarctica it caused more winter sea ice to form than normally does as it is not saline as the ocean water is.

In response to the above, I provided a reference to this IPCC statement:

There is low confidence in the scientific understanding of the observed increase in Antarctic sea ice extent since 1979 owing to the incomplete and competing scientific explanations for the causes of change and low confidence in estimates of internal variability.

Then you provided a quote about the Arctic as if that were relevant to the above. Why? What is the “strange fashion”? And what possible meaning could the following have under any view of the matter:

If Climate Denialism weren’t a mental disorder, why should this be?

CB

My apologies! I didn’t see anything about Antarctic sea ice on that page. Next time you should probably quote the passage you’re referring to.

The CO₂ we’ve already emitted has set the planet on a course toward the complete meltdown of Greenland, if Earth’s history is any indication… so why are you nitpicking confidence-levels in explanations for Antarctic sea ice instead of acknowledging the problem?

What is the basis for your confidence that the current warming is not similar to what we have seen before?

CB

“What is the basis for your confidence that the current warming is not similar to what we have seen before?”

Because polar ice caps have never before in Earth’s history been able to withstand levels of CO₂ as high as we are pushing them. Preceding the Quaternary, a spike in CO₂ to just under 400PPM destroyed the ice on Greenland completely:

The new discovery indicates that even during the warmest periods since the ice sheet formed, the center of Greenland remained stable. “It’s likely that it did not fully melt at any time,” Bierman said. This allowed a tundra landscape to be locked away, unmodified, under ice through millions of years of global warming and cooling.

“the link you included to support this statement… flatly contradicts it”

It might appear that way if you don’t actually read the article. The current Greenland ice sheet formed around 2.7 million years ago because of a drop in CO₂ which briefly peaked to just under 400PPM and then fell again. Their statement is that the ice has been stable since then. You can see the peak in the CO₂ signal which is correlated with an ice-free Greenland in the graph I’ve already given you.

Swood1000

And you never answered my question as to the Vostok data: if CO₂ was responsible for driving temperature up, then how could temperature fall when CO₂ remained at the same levels that supposedly drove temperature up, unless there were some other driver responsible? And if another driver was overpowering the CO₂ and causing temperature to fall, then why do we assume that the other driver did not cause temperature (and CO₂) to rise in the first place?

CB

“how could temperature fall when CO₂ remained at the same levels that supposedly drove temperature up, unless there were some other driver responsible?”

There are other drivers, of course! This was never in question.

The question was whether or not the human-caused increase in atmospheric CO₂ from 290PPM before the industrial revolution to 400PPM today can be overridden by other climate drivers, and the answer to that for any reasonable person is a resounding no!

Here is 800,000 years of CO₂ concentrations from polar ice caps, going back to the oldest significant ice on Earth:

Then why are you here interacting with them? It seems remarkably heartless, like a person who, for his own entertainment, stops periodically to converse with the madman. How do you justify this?

CB

“Then why are you here interacting with them?”

I am interacting with you because you pose a danger to yourself and others, and I would like you to get better!

I believe allowing you to air your self-destructive ideas in public helps wake you up to your sickness.

What do you think? Is it helpful for you to express yourself?

…or did you not realise you were afflicted?

Swood1000

Here’s another group of papers that estimates the climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO₂ to be in the neighborhood of or less than 1 deg C. Suicidally mentally ill all, along with anyone who allows these papers to raise the slightest doubt?

Are these people also afflicted? Should they be told about your new therapy technique? Perhaps following the same approach they should be advised to write more papers, in order to “express” themselves and wake up from their sickness. Agreed?

Swood1000

“Climate Deniers are suicidally mentally ill.”

So you would say that authors of papers like this one: http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/pubs/HeatCapacity.pdf (estimates a warming of 1.1±0.5 deg C for a doubling of CO₂), are not merely in error but are suicidally mentally ill, as is anyone who, for whatever reason, is caused by such a paper to entertain doubts about how imminent global warming is?

SkyHunter

Schwartz is assuming an equilibrium response of 5 years for a century scale forcing. A more reasonable 15-20 years for equilibrium response yields an estimate closer to 3ºC per doubling.

Swood1000

Does this mean that, unlike CB (to whom the original post was addressed), you conclude that Schwartz is merely in error, and not suicidally mentally ill?

SkyHunter

Schwartz does not conclude that he has the correct climate sensitivity estimate. He simply presented a method of estimating climate sensitivity and published his results. So no, I do not believe he is mentally ill. I believe that the people who use his results, without acknowledging the caveats, are suffering from mental illness.

Swood1000

“Schwartz does not conclude that he has the correct climate sensitivity estimate. He simply presented a method of estimating climate sensitivity…”

So he is presenting a method of estimating climate sensitivity but we cannot infer that he believes his method arrives at a correct estimate of climate sensitivity?

SkyHunter

Obviously you have not read or comprehended the paper you cite. Nor have you read the responses to it.

Since the various climate responses to forcing vary in lag time from days to centuries, his simple model and single lag constant is not a robust estimate of climate sensitivity.

Swood1000

I believe that the people who use his results, without acknowledging the caveats, are suffering from mental illness.

Can you point me to his caveats?

SkyHunter

Here an initial attempt is made to determine climate sensitivity through energy balance considerations that are based on the time dependence of GMST and ocean heat content over the period for which instrumental measurements are available

A potential concern with evaluating global ocean heat capacity as (dH/dt)/(dTs/dt) that is manifested in Figure 2 arises from the relatively large fluctuation in ocean heat content compared to that in the temperature anomaly data series.

And his margin of error is only one sigma instead of two, not a very robust finding.

He is attempting to refine the estimate of climate sensitivity. So far he has not succeeded, but I see no reason to poo poo his efforts, or to taut them as proof of low climate sensitivity.

Swood1000

Schwartz apparently revised it upward to 8.5 ± 2.5 years,

“…corresponding to an equilibrium temperature increase for doubled CO2 of 1.9 ± 1.0 K, somewhat lower than the central estimate of the sensitivity given in the 2007 assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but consistent within the uncertainties of both estimates.” http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/pubs/HeatCapCommentResponse.pdf

Still off?

SkyHunter

Still not a full equilibrium response from the fast feedbacks.

Here is the thing, he is using a simple zero dimensional energy balance model and assuming equilibrium response to forcing to be less than 10 years. While it is an interesting exercise, it is not a robust estimate of climate sensitivity.

Swood1000

How does one account for this? Is Schwartz (a) a simpleton, (b) not trying to demonstrate anything objectively useful, (c) a dupe, (d) insane, (e) corrupt, or (f) making reasonable assumptions, though ones different from the ones you would make?

SkyHunter

This is how science is done. Even though his estimate is not robust, he had an idea and he followed through. The community evaluated it and found it lacking. But that doesn’t mean that it was not worth the exercise. It was a intriguing way of looking at climate sensitivity, and is helpful if for no other reason that it demonstrates the limitations of the methodology.

Swood1000

”Climate Deniers are
suicidally mentally ill.”

Here’s another group of papers that estimates the climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO₂ to be in the neighborhood of or less than 1 deg C. Suicidally mentally ill all, along with anyone who allows their work to raise the slightest doubt?

Please let me know if I can find you mental health resources in your area.

Remember, there’s no reason to struggle with suicidal feelings alone and nothing wrong with asking for help if you need it.

Swood1000

We are right out of time for this therapy session.

I’m sorry I missed the session. However, for the next session could you explain some things to me?

When I come across numerous studies by erudite scientists that conclude that the climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO₂ is warming of about 1 deg C, and when they say that they reach that conclusion, in part, by observing what the actual result has been of a doubling of CO₂, how do I go about ignoring this?

“Now, I am hedging a bet because, to be honest with you, if the hiatus is still going on as of the sixth IPCC report, that report is going to have a large burden on its shoulders walking in the door, because recent literature has shown that the chances of having a hiatus of 20 years are vanishingly small.”

how do I convince myself that since the existence of a hiatus was contradicted by CB, I must shut my eyes to it if I wish to get well?

SkyHunter

Most of your links are broken, but I am willing to discuss any peer-reviewed paper.

Mea culpa! The site I got this from listed it on one page at 0.54C and on another page at 2C. I have since sent an inquiry to them asking WTF? Maybe there are some uncorrupted/sane personnel handling some of their web pages. But I have some questions for you.

First, the charge has been made that the higher climate sensitivity figures would have produced much more warming than has been observed, and they simply hypothesize “aerosols” to the extent necessary to produce the observed warming. What is your response?

Second, do you recognize the existence of a warming “hiatus” and if so (a) doesn’t this suggest that the models are inadequate, and (b) why shouldn’t we wait and see whether there is any actual warming of the kind predicted?

SkyHunter

Aerosols are element that add the most uncertainty to estimates of climate sensitivity. I believe human aerosol emissions are a negative forcing, and explain the radiative imbalance at the top of the atmosphere fairly well, but are only a small element in the overall system.

The “hiatus” is in the GMST (global mean surface temperature) and lower troposphere. The TOA imbalance is still about 0.5W/m2, the ice is still melting and the oceans are still warming. A slowing in the GMST trend of less than 30 years is statistically insignificant, since the bulk (<90%) of the climates heat is in the oceans.

Swood1000

“A slowing in the GMST trend of less than 30 years is statistically insignificant…”

“Now, I am hedging a bet because, to be honest with you, if the hiatus is still going on as of the sixth IPCC report, that report is going to have a large burden on its shoulders walking in the door, because recent literature has shown that the chances of having a hiatus of 20 years are vanishingly small.” William Collins, director of the Center at LBNL for Integrative Modeling of the Earth System (CLIMES) at the Lawrence Berkeley National laboratory, and a Lead Author on the Fourth and Fifth Assessment of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). http://www.aps.org/policy/statements/upload/climate-seminar-transcript.pdf, page 92.

SkyHunter

Santer et. al. analyze 32 years of satellite data and determine that they can identify an AGW signal in the lower troposphere with a minimum 17 years of data of the data.

1) The lower troposphere is heated primarily by sea surface emission. Which means that it is a secondary line of evidence.

2) Many ocean cycles are 30, 60, or even 100 year cycles.

3) The past is no predictor of the future, since the last time the oceans warmed this fast was at the beginning of the Holocene.

There is still a clear warming trend in the GMST. This past June was the hottest June ever, the first half of this year is tied with 2002 as the third warmest six month period,and there is an 80% chance of an El Nino event this fall. This year and the next will make that trend even clearer.

The oceans are the climates thermal mass. And the oceans are gaining a lot of heat.

”A slowing in the GMST trend of less than 30 years is statistically insignificant…”

Just to clarify, this is contradicted by the statement of Dr. Collins, correct?

SkyHunter

No. Dr. Collins was able to detect the AGW signal in 17 years out of 32, but that does not mean he could so it with a longer dataset.

So while it is possible, the last 17 years is statistically insignificant, since the margin of error is greater than the signal.

Swood1000

No, Dr. Collins is the one who made the statement about the hiatus going on for 20 years.

“Now, I am hedging a bet because, to be honest with you, if the hiatus is still going on as of the sixth IPCC report, that report is going to have a large burden on its shoulders walking in the door, because recent literature has shown that the chances of having a hiatus of 20 years are vanishingly small.” William Collins, director of the Center at LBNL for Integrative Modeling of the Earth System (CLIMES) at the Lawrence Berkeley National laboratory, and a Lead Author on the Fourth and Fifth Assessment of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). http://www.aps.org/policy/statements/upload/climate-seminar-transcript.pdf, page 92.

SkyHunter

The 20 year trend is 0.109ºC ±0.101ºC/decade at 2 sigma. Would you consider it to be statistically significant?

The 30 year trend is 0.167ºC ±0.058ºC/decade at 2 sigma.

That is a clear and statistically significant trend.

Swood1000

The 20 year trend is 0.109ºC ±0.101ºC/decade at 2 sigma. Would you consider it to be statistically significant?

My point is that an assertion of statistical insignificance is contradicted by what Dr. Collins said. Maybe he has different numbers in mind, but statistical insignificance would not equate to a “large burden” in the mind of Dr. Collins, don’t you agree?

SkyHunter

I do agree that a 20 year hiatus would be rare, but when the signal is smaller than the margin for error, it is very difficult to argue statistical significance. Therefore, Dr. Collins does not contradict the assertion of 30 years for robust statistical significance. During the last 20 years the trend is about equal to the margin of error, therefore it is not a particularly robust signal. The 25 year trend is 0.152ºC ±0.078ºC/decade, which is statistically significant.

So while it may be possible to detect the AGW signal in some 17 year periods, a longer dataset reduces the uncertainty. Twenty five years may be sufficient in all cases, but 30 gives one much greater confidence in the results.

Swood1000

Well, clearly your calculations and those of Dr. Collins must be different. Otherwise we are left with Dr. Collins referring to statistical insignificance as a “large burden.” His calculations must result in statistical significance for 20 years, correct?

SkyHunter

Well since we don’t have Dr. Collins calculations… we have no idea what he means by “large burden.”

I am using a standard calculator and the GISS data, there is not much difference between datasets, but GISS extrapolates to infill under sampled areas with satellite data. I can’t imagine that Dr. Collins is doing anything different.

There is a new paper just out that attributes the warming in the Atlantic to stronger Trade Winds in Pacific, which could explain why there has been a predominantly negative ENSO cycle.

Do you agree that if the hiatus is still going on as of the sixth IPCC report, that report is going to have a large burden on its shoulders walking in the door?

SkyHunter

Satellites measure incoming and outgoing radiation at the top of the atmosphere. More is coming in than is going out. The Earth is cooled by emission to space. The slowdown in the GMST trend means less emission.

That longer the pause, the more heat the planet accumulates. I am confident that should such a scenario come to pass, scientists will have an explanation.

Swood1000

I am confident that should such a scenario come to pass, scientists will have an explanation.

But I am having difficulty getting you to answer my question directly. Do you agree with Dr. Collins that, as things stand today, the chances of having a hiatus of 20 years are vanishingly small, or do you disagree with him? It appears that you have been telling me the latter but I would just like to confirm that.

Swood1000

The slowdown in the GMST trend means less emission.

I don’t follow this. A slowdown in warming would mean greater emission, if emission is responsible, would it not?

That longer the pause, the more heat the planet accumulates.

How is this the case? A pause means that the GMST is not increasing. This would be either because (a) not as much heat is getting in through the atmosphere, or (b) more heat is escaping, or (c) the heat is ending up in the ocean. But how can we say: X shows a pause and Y does not. Therefore we know that X is experiencing more heat accumulation than Y.

SkyHunter

If the surface is cooler, it emits less energy. If the incoming energy is the same, there is a greater net accumulation of heat.

That is not what we are saying. If the surface is emitting less energy, then the troposphere will be cooler. This results in a greater net balance at the top of the atmosphere. Which means that the oceans are taking up the excess energy. This was not one the predicted response, the research data confirms it.

Swood1000

That is not what we are saying. If the surface is emitting less energy, then the troposphere will be cooler. This results in a greater net balance at the top of the atmosphere. Which means that the oceans are taking up the excess energy. This was not only the predicted response, the research data confirms it.

Can you point me to a study or a discussion on this issue?

SkyHunter

We are discussing it.

There are many facets here, which do you not understand?

The upper atmosphere is warmed from the top down, primarily from UV absorption by ozone. The lower atmosphere is warmed from the bottom up by greenhouse gas absorption of IR.

Scientists are skeptical by nature. Wunsch is simply saying that there are too many uncertainties to draw hard conclusions. Which is why he recently published his research on deep ocean warming. Research that supports the hypothesis that the oceans are taking up most of the energy imbalance at the TOA.

FIG. 4. Time series of annual average global integrals of upper ocean heat content anomaly (1021 J, or ZJ) for (a) 0-100 m, (b) 0-300 m, (c) 0-700 m, and (d) 0-1800 m. Time series are shown using ZIF estimates relative to both ClimArgo (dashed grey lines) and Clim1950 (dashed black lines). Time series are also shown using REP estimate (black solid lines), which are not affected by shifts in the mean climatology (B11). Thin vertical lines denote when the coverage (Fig. 3) reaches 50% for (a) 0-100 m, (b) 100- 300 m, (c) 300-700 m, and (d) 900-1800 m.

“The authors regard the REP values as the best ones. The vertical bar in Fig 4 above denotes when the coverage reaches 50%. Note that for measurements to 700 m, 50% coverage was reached in 1984. The three different curves represent 3 climatologies based on different assumptions about under sampled or unsampled regions of the ocean. The two main features that strike me in Fig 4 is the sharp increase from 1995-2003, and then the flat trend since 2003. Also the sharp increase is more evident in the whole layer 0-1800 m than in the shallow layers near the surface, but note that 50% coverage was achieved for the layer 900-1800 m only since 2005.” http://judithcurry.com/2014/01/21/ocean-heat-content-uncertainties/

“In recent years, from 2004 to 2011, while the upper ocean is not warming, the ocean continues to absorb heat at depth (e.g., Levitus et al. 2012; von Schuckman and Le Traon 2011), here estimated at a rate of 0.56 W m-2 470 when integrating over 0–1800m.

Why would JC misrepresent Lyman and Johnson if she were being honest?

Swood1000

Which statement of hers is a misrepresentation?

SkyHunter

She said that the only dataset to support ocean sequestration of heat is a reanalysis. Lyman and Johnson 2013’s dataset is observational, not a reanalysis. It directly contradicts her.

“In recent years, from 2004 to 2011, while the upper ocean is not warming, the ocean continues to absorb heat at depth (e.g., Levitus et al. 2012; von Schuckman and Le Traon 2011), here estimated at a rate of 0.56 W m-2 when integrating over 0–1800 m.”

Swood1000

“The two main features that strike me in Fig 4 is the sharp increase from 1995-2003, and then the flat trend since 2003.”

So you are disputing that Fig 4 shows a flat trend since 2003?

SkyHunter

Yes, look closely at the time from when they achieved 50% spatial coverage to 1800 meters. There is a clear and steady trend, which they estimate to be 0.57W/m2.

Figure 4 is scaled to show three different methodologies, not ocean heat content.

Table 1 of Lyman & Johnson shows reductions in the 0 – 300 and 0 -700m levels. How does the heat skip these levels and go directly to the bottom?

SkyHunter

Evaporation driven thermohaline circulation. For instance, most of the heat entering the oceans is entering in the tropical Pacific. The Sun is always shining on some part of the tropical Pacific. The trade winds blow the push the warm water west to Indonesia, where it pools, evaporates, and sinks. This happens to all ocean surface water when it is warmed, evaporation increases, and it gets saltier and heavier, so even though warmer, it is heavier than the cooler yet fresher water below.

Swood1000

Wunsch and Heimbach concluded that much less heat is being added to the oceans, compared to claims in previous studies:

“A total change in heat content, top-to-bottom, is found (discussed below) of approximately 4 x 10²² J in 19 years, for a net heating of 0.2 +-0.1 W/m2, smaller than some published values (e.g., Hansen et al., 2005, 0.86+-0.12 W/m2; Lyman et al., 2010, 0.63+-0.28 W/m2; or von Schuckmann and Le Traon, 2011, 0.55+-0.1 W/m2; but note the differing averaging periods), but indistinguishable from the summary Fig. 14 of Abraham et al. (2013). Perhaps coincidentally, it is similar to the 135-year 700 m depth ocean rate of 0.2+-0.1 W/m2 of Roemmich et al. (2012). On multi-year time-scales accessible with a 20-year record, the present estimate is sensitive in the upper ocean to the prior estimates of atmospheric heat transfers. In contrast, the abyssal ocean response to multi-year surface thermodynamic variability is expected to be confined to small convective regions, boundary regions of baroclinic deformation radius width, and near the equator.”

“Simple calculations show that the ocean responds, and thus remembers, on time scales of seconds out to thousands of years. When interpreting measurements of changes, any assumption that they have been generated by disturbances from the recent past has to be examined and justified.”

Wunsch 2014 is a study of the abyssal ocean. That graph depicts a warming ocean, just like this one.

JC is using the deceptive eyeballing technique to distort and misrepresent the figure.

Here is a letter to the editor of the Australian by Carl Wunsch, taking them to task for misrepresenting their work.

“Understanding the ocean

THE article by Graham Lloyd will likely leave a mis-impression with many of your readers concerning the substance of our paper that will appear in the Journal of Physical Oceanography (“Puzzle of deep ocean cooling”, 25/7).

We never assert that global warming and warming of the oceans are not occurring — we do find an ocean warming, particularly in the upper regions.

Contrary to the implications of Lloyd’s article, parts of the deep ocean are warming, parts are cooling, and although the global abyssal average is negative, the value is tiny in a global warming context.

Those parts of the abyss that are warming are most directly linked to the surface (as pointed out by Andy Hogg from the ANU).

Scientifically, we need to better understand what is going on everywhere, and that is an issue oceanographers must address over the next few years — a challenging observational problem that our paper is intended to raise.

Carl Wunsch, Harvard University and Massachusetts, Institute of Technology”

They also state:

“Nonetheless, as with any least squares fit, it is a current “best estimate,” is not claimed to be “correct” in any absolute sense, and is obviously subject to quantitative change. The present solution, in terms of misfits to all of the data (whose numbers are dominated by the meteorological values, altimetry, and Argo), is deemed adequate for analysis.”

Swood1000

“JC is using the deceptive eyeballing technique to distort and misrepresent the figure.”

The graph JC showed is from Wunsch, page 54, and I didn’t say that Wunsch didn’t show a warming ocean. I said that he showed it warming less rapidly. But he does not show warming in the 2000 to bottom or 3600 to bottom range, and says that

“the abyssal ocean response to multi-year surface thermodynamic variability is expected to be confined to small convective regions, boundary regions of baroclinic deformation radius width, and near the equator.”

SkyHunter

Right, it takes centuries to millennium for the effects of surface warming to show up in the abyssal ocean He also says that everywhere there is a warming trend in the abyssal it is likely coming from surface warming.

The bottom line is Wunsch’s work confirms that the ocean is still taking up a lot of heat. And since the paper’s focus was on the abyssal ocean, it is, as he pointed out, doubtful his estimate is correct.

Swood1000

Also this from the same study:

SkyHunter

Where is the study?

That chart shows a positive energy flux of 0.56W/m2 in the top 1800 meters during the 2004 – 2011 period. How can that be consistent with a flat trend in ocean heat content?

Gary Slabaugh

That the oceans are warming is based on observation. You posted above that ocean cycles can be 30, 60, even 100 year cycles. How uncertain is the knowledge that this current warming is anthropogenic, rather than part of a natural cycle?

SkyHunter

The natural cycles are internal variability. The oceans are warming overall, not just moving heat around.

The “hiatus” is in the GMST (global mean surface temperature) and lower troposphere. The TOA imbalance is still about 0.5W/m2, the ice is still melting and the oceans are still warming.

But why do we have confidence in the models if the predictions they make are shown to be not reliable?

SkyHunter

They can’t predict what the conditions will be in the future, but they can reproduce the past when fed historical numbers. That they could not predict the extended negative cycle in the ENSO index is no reflection on their skill. They were never intended to predict ENSO cycles.

Instead of randomly generated values for things like volcanic eruptions, and periodic ocean cycles such as ENSO, AMO, and PDO, use the historical values and the models perform with great skill. Recently a team did just that and reproduced the “hiatus.”

Swood1000

but they can reproduce the past when fed historical numbers

I thought that they were unable to reproduce the “Medieval Warm Period” or the “Little Ice Age.”

SkyHunter

Why do you think that?

We don’t have the same amount of historical data that far back, but the models can hindcast quite well. In fact that is how they are tuned and their skill measured.

“The proxy reconstructions tend to show a smaller forced response than is simulated by the models. This discrepancy is shown, at least partly, to be likely associated with the difference in the response to large volcanic eruptions between reconstructions and model simulations.”

Swood1000

But is it the models, the reconstructions, or a combination of both?

You mean maybe there really was no Medieval Warm Period?

SkyHunter

Not at all, just that some reconstructions perhaps over estimate it’s global impact. It is quite visible in the Greenland ice cores, but not very pronounced in the Antarctic cores.

Swood1000

But you will agree that to the extent that there was a Medieval Warm Period, “the models cannot explain the warm conditions”?

SkyHunter

Some models maybe.

Swood1000

Some models maybe.

It appears to be models generally.

“Several of the reconstructions have periods during the LIA that are clearly colder in the reconstructions than in the models; equally, there are several reconstructions that have periods of the MCA which are significantly warmer in the reconstructions than in the model simulations. Neither of these features is present for every reconstruction, however, indicating that there is substantial uncertainty in the level to which the MCA and LIA can be reproduced due to external forcing (see also figure 4b).” http://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/homes/ghegerl/Schureretal_JCli.pdf, pp 19-20.

Swood1000

“That they could not predict the extended negative cycle in the ENSO index is no reflection on their skill. They were never intended to predict ENSO cycles.”

So, climate is too complicated for anyone to expect that models could predict ENSO, AMO and PDO cycles but the models accurately predict and take into consideration every other important variable. Is that your position?

Swood1000

“They can’t predict what the conditions will be in the future…”

Those who doubt do so for this reason.

SkyHunter

The models are to predict what will happen given a certain scenario. If the scenario is not the same, the projection will not be the same.

Swood1000

But isn’t that the crux of the problem? Whether we call it a “scenario” or future “conditions,” that we have no way of predicting what the scenario will be, so we cannot make accurate predictions?

SkyHunter

I would beg to differ, Hansen’s early models were quite predictive, even with the higher 4W/m2 forcing for doubled CO2, and a higher climate sensitivity.

Swood1000

In Scenario A, Hansen’s predicted temperature increase, from 1988 to 2012, was 0.9ºC, over four times higher than the actual increase of 0.22ºC.

In Scenario B Hansen’s prediction was 0.75ºC, over three times higher than the actual increase of 0.22ºC.

Scenario C assumed “a rapid curtailment of trace gas emissions such that the net climate forcing ceases to increase after the year 2000.” http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha02700w.html He was telling us that if we followed his advice this was going to be the good news. The Scenario C prediction was 0.29ºC, only 31% higher than the actual increase of 0.22ºC. So this one came closest to the truth, but of course there was no curtailment whatsoever of trace gas emissions after the year 2000.

So I’m not sure I would call this “quite predictive.” More to the point is this graphic:

SkyHunter

Where did you get a GMST increase of 0.22ºC?

From 1988 to 2014 the trend has been 0.151ºC/decade, for an average increase of 0.3775ºC since 1988. Hansen’s Scenario B projected a warming trend of 0.26ºC/decade.

Scenario B is the closest to the actual forcing, which is about 16% less, so actual emissions and temperatures are between B and C. Emissions are closer to Scenario B, while temperatures are closer to Scenario C. Hansen was also using the old estimate of 4W/m2 instead of 3.7W/m2, and climate sensitivity in the 1988 model was 4.2ºC. Considering the state of climate knowledge and the limitations of computational horse-power, Hansen’s model performed extremely well. With the updated estimate of forcing at the tropopause of 3.7W/m2 and a climate sensitivity of 3ºC, he would have been almost spot on. We learned more from what was wrong with Hansen’s model than what was right. That is the nature of science.

BTW- That is tropical mid-troposphere. Hansen’s model output was GMST.

The tropics between 20N and 20S includes the ENSO region, which has been on a predominantly negative cycle since the 1998 El Nino. Since the troposphere is heated by surface emission, a cooler tropical ocean surface emits less heat, which results in a cooler mid-troposphere temperature.

That is a dishonest way of displaying the data. If he were being honest and objective he would have compared trend lines, not annual anomalies. But then, Watts is a famous liar so it is to be expected.

Swood1000

trend lines, not annual anomalies

You make a good point. But even if he had done that the scenario A and B trend lines are significantly greater than the average of the GISTEMP and HadCRUT4 trend lines.

Watts is a famous liar so it is to be expected

The graphic was actually done by Ira Glickstein but I have heard this said about Watts many times. Do you have any examples that are not mere differences of interpretation but actual lies?

SkyHunter

When one consistently misrepresents the truth, like with that graph, one becomes known as a famous liar.

And actual emission scenarios are between B and C. The point is, the model performed extremely well considering the state of the science. Had he used a 3.7W/m2 forcing and a climate sensitivity of 3ºC, the projection would have been much closer. The mere fact that the temperature continues to rise while solar activity declines should be your first clue that something is different. That something is the opacity of the atmosphere to IR.

Swood1000

And actual emission scenarios are between B and C.

But much closer to C.

Had he used a 3.7W/m2 forcing and a climate sensitivity of 3ºC, the projection would have been much closer.

That is the same as saying that if the errors his model contained had not been so great the model would not have been off by as much as it was.

SkyHunter

No the actual emissions are closer to B, while the temperature trend is closer to C.

These were not errors in the model, they were incorrect assumptions input into the model. Assumptions that we now know were incorrect. We learned more from what he got wrong, than what he got right. And he got a lot right, particularly the response to the Pinatubo eruption.

Swood1000

No the actual emissions are closer to B, while the temperature trend is closer to C.

Not following. The actual emissions, being an average of the GISTEMP and HadCRUT4 points for 2012, are closer to C than to B.

SkyHunter

No. GISS and CRUT are GMST data, not emission and forcing data. The modeler must guess the future emission scenario. Actual emissions are closer to B than C, actual temperatures are closer to C.

That looks to be a graph comparing model runs with the radiosonde and satellite data for the tropical mid-troposphere.

My guess is the model output is GMST and your source is deceptively comparing it with the tropical mid-troposphere.

If you look at the map of the globe, you will notice that most of the area between 20N and 20S is ocean. Since the ENSO index has been predominantly negative since 1998, so one would expect the troposphere in the tropics to be cooler.

Most models do not reproduce this phenomenon, so even if all those model runs were only of the mid-troposphere in the tropics (highly unlikely), it is not a proxy for global warming.

Have you noticed that these graphs are sourced from non-scientific sources?

Swood1000

Apparently, this is IPCC AR5 Second Draft Figure 1.4 with annotations.

red squares are 2012 and 2013 (to date) HadCRUT4. The orange wedge illustrates combined AR4 A1B-A1T projections. The yellow arrows show verified confidence intervals in 2005, 2010 and 2015 digitized from the original AR4 diagram (Figure 10.26) for A1B. Observed values have been outside the AR4 envelope for all but one year since publication of AR4. IPCC authors added a grey envelope around the AR4 envelope, presumably to give rhetorical support for their false claim about models and observations; however, this envelope did not occur in AR4 or any peer reviewed literature.

SkyHunter

I don’t know what you mean about the error bars, but that graph is improperly baselined.

DR. CHRISTY: Yes. Oh, I mean, they have the surface temperature in them. I don’t have a surface temperature plotted here. DR. KOONIN: I am asking whether the same models reproduce GMST and the error is in the vertical structure, or they also do a bad job on GMST? DR. CHRISTY: It is not as bad as this on GMST. It looks more like this (indicating slide).

But how does the graph differ from what you thought the reality was?

SkyHunter

If you impose the observed SST, which Christy doesn’t do, the models match observations in the mid-troposphere. Christy even admits he is focusing on this area because it has the signal he is looking for.

Swood1000

If you impose the observed SST…

What do you mean?

Christy even admits he is focusing on this area because it has the signal he is looking for.

He is looking for the hot spot signal.

DR.CHRISTY: This is the tropics. Huge amount of mass right here. If you want to look at something that has a greenhouse signature from model simulations, that would be the place to do it because it has the biggest signal, the most mass. So, now we are talking about the joules, the most joules of energy that are going toaffect the system. And so right there it’s commonly called the tropical hot spot response in climate models.

SkyHunter

He is measuring the tropical mid-troposphere, it is warmed primarily by surface emission from the ocean. If he were looking to test model accuracy, using the historic SST is a better metric of how well the model reproduces mid-tropospheric temperature.

The hot spot is where the models predict increased latent heat transport will show up. Recent research suggests that there is more lateral transport than the models are capturing. It has no real bearing on Christies argument since if SST are flat, there is no increase in latent heat transport, so he shouldn’t expect to find one.

Swood1000

If he were looking to test model accuracy, using the historic SST is a better metric of how well the model reproduces mid-tropospheric temperature.

Not following. Which Wood for Trees graph would you substitute for the circles and squares that Christy used?

SkyHunter

Sorry, for that kind of detailed data you need to access directly. I don’t believe there is anything particularly wrong with Christy’s data. My problem is with his overstating the significance of it.

Swood1000

He is saying that the significance of it is that it shows that the models have significantly over-estimated the amount of warming that we are experiencing. And you are saying that that is not the case because he compared apples and oranges? The data he compared the models with is not as relevant for that purpose as some other data?

SkyHunter

That may be what he is saying, but it is not what he is demonstrating.

The tropical mid-troposphere (TMT) is warmed predominantly by ocean surface emission of IR. Since the ENSO cycle has been dominated by La Nina for the past 20 years, he should not expect to find any significant warming in the TMT.

He is going to where one would expect to find a cooling trend based on the historic ENSO index and finding it. Then he is using that fact to exaggerate model uncertainty.

It is not that he compared apples to oranges, he used model output of TMT temperature, based on random SST projected by the model and compared the observed TMT temperature. The SST in the model projections were much warmer than the observed SST. When you impose the actual SST, the model output is in line with observations. This is to be expected since the TMT is warmed by surface emission.

Had Christy been objective, he would have imposed the SST in the model runs and compared those to observations. But he was not being objective, he was manufacturing doubt.

The models do not over-estimate warming in the TMT. They over-estimated how fast the ocean would take up the heat. They failed to predict ENSO cycles. They failed to predict emissions of aerosols in China and India. They failed to predict solar cycle 24, etc. etc. etc.

This is not a failure of the model however, since the models were never expected to predict such things.

Swood1000

The SST in the model projections were much warmer than the observed SST. When you impose the actual SST, the model output is in line with observations.

The predictions of TMT were off because the predictions of SST were off. You are saying that the failure to be able to predict the ENSO cycle is not indicative of a general failure of the models and that other predictions should be used for that purpose, not predictions dominated by ENSO factors? Which predictions should be used?

SkyHunter

Yes. That is exactly what I am saying. If you impose the ENSO index on the models, they reproduce the historic GMST trend very closely.

When ENSO is negative, the warm tropical pacific water is blown westward by the trade winds where it mounds up, evaporates, and sinks. When the ENSO is positive the trade winds weaken and the warm water spreads out over the surface warming the troposphere.

Swood1000

So the modelers made a mistake by allowing it to be understood by the general public that their predictions had a granularity of less than 30 years, or a mistake by making such predictions without a more prominent reference to the fine print of assumptions (these predictions assume the following ENSO characteristics, etc.)

SkyHunter

Yes, the scientists who run the models are not particularly good at propaganda. I use propaganda in the neutral sense of communicating a message. Their unexpected opposition on the other hand specializes in public relations, IE propaganda. So they take the uncertainty, exaggerate it, and create a specious narrative that the models are wrong and therefore AGW is a hoax, or at least no big deal.

Communicating complex concepts to a general public with a 4 second attention span is a daunting task. In fact is was even a major topic of discussion at the 2013 AGU conference.

We don’t need to know what the cycles are to project a trend because these cycles represent internal variability, not external forcing. They only move heat around, they don’t add to the total except through minor feedbacks. Over time they trend to zero.

The ENSO region has an outsized effect global temperature. The hiatus period coincides with a predominately negative ENSO period.

Swood1000

“because recent literature has shown that the chances of having a hiatus of 20 years are vanishingly small”

So Dr. Collins must think that the granularity is 20 years? (I realize that you have not yet gotten over your shock that Dr. Collins could have been so impolitic as to say such a thing with a stenographer present but it’s on the record now and you’re stuck with it.)

SkyHunter

I don’t disagree with Dr. Collins.

What is your point?

Swood1000

I don’t disagree with Dr. Collins.

Well that is a surprise. By “granularity” I mean the period of time long enough to have experienced an entire ENSO and/or other cycle so that it couldn’t be said that we have only had the cold part, etc. So then such factors should be a wash and the underlying model prediction (warming) should be seen.

I thought you were saying that 30 years or longer would be necessary.

SkyHunter

I didn’t just say it, I demonstrated it. But that is irrelevant. The reason it takes so long to detect a trend in the GMST record is because the surface and atmosphere represent a tiny portion of the climate’s thermal mass. There are two better metrics that don’t need a temporally large dataset; ocean heat content and radiative flux at the top of the atmosphere. Ocean heat content because the oceans are 90% of the thermal mass, and TOA radiative flux, because it is a direct measure of the energy coming in and going out.

Since both of those datasets indicate that the earth has been, and still is accumulating 0.6W/m2, there is no doubt the earth is still warming as predicted by physics.

Just because the signal is not strong in 5% of the thermal mass does not mean that the earth stopped warming. It means that someone is deliberately using a statistically insignificant results to manufacture doubt.

Swood1000

So Dr. Collins must think that the granularity is not greater than 20 years?

I don’t disagree with Dr. Collins.

I thought you were saying that 30 years or longer would be necessary.

I didn’t just say it, I demonstrated it.

You said you agreed with Dr. Collins that the granularity is not greater than 20 years, and then said that 30 years would be necessary. It can’t be both.

SkyHunter

I agree that the probability of a hiatus in the GMST of longer than 20 years is unlikely. Not impossible as you seem to be implying, but unlikely.

ENSO is very unpredictable. In light of that and the fact that we have no recent precedents for a climate being forced by anthropogenic emissions, we don’t really know how these past cycles will respond once forced from their steady state. So we must rely on models. As we both know, models can’t capture all the detail, particularly the ENSO cycles.

It is not outside the realm of possibility that the current trend of a warming Atlantic strengthening the Trade Winds could lead to a long term La Nina dominated ENSO pattern. Remember, during this hiatus period two global temperature records were set.

Swood1000

Remember, during this hiatus period two global temperature records were set.

Which ones were those?

SkyHunter

2010 and 2005 are the two warmest years on record.

In fact 9 of the 10 warmest years on record occurred during the 21st century.

That is not a global temperature record. It is an extrapolation of the lower troposphere temperature from satellite data in the microwave spectrum. It represents less than 1% of the climate’s thermal mass. And it is the only global dataset with a negative trend.

Choosing only the outlier because it supports your belief is cherry picking.

Swood1000

I use it because it’s the one I have and because I assume that the others, though they might not show zero warming, will be fairly similar. We are talking about a “hiatus” period, after all.

We can debate how much warming is shown by the other charts but they all depict a period referred to as a “hiatus” period, a concept that seems to conflict with the notion of these years being the warmest ever.

SkyHunter

You must not quite understand the concept of “hiatus” in this context. The hiatus period is a pause in the GMST trend, in this case a slowing. But this is only the near-surface temperature, a small fraction of the global heat content, with a signal that is overwhelmed by ocean cycles, particularly ENSO. Even though the GMST trend has slowed, it has not stopped. If you use the hybrid dataset that infills under sampled surface areas with satellite data, you get a positive trend of 0.114ºC/decade since 1997.

Which is why every little El Nino event sets a new GMST record.

Swood1000

What’s the correct set of data to use?

SkyHunter

Now you have reduced it to a ten years hiatus.

Your cherries are getting smaller.

SkyHunter

The last hiatus was 30 years long. Matches with the MEI, flat when La Nina is predominant, rises sharply when El Nino is predominant.

I have heard it said by representatives of both sides that over the period when we have had the equivalent of a 70% increase in CO₂ we have had an increase in temperature of 0.7⁰C. (a) is that a number you agree with? (b) if this were true, would it be good evidence that the climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO₂ is 1⁰C?

SkyHunter

Since there is still a 0.6W/m2 imbalance at the TOA, the climate is still being forced, so using current temperature data is misleading since the climate is has not yet achieved a steady state response to the forcing. So to your points.

a) Temperatures have increased on average 0.85ºC since 1880. using a 30 year lag in response to forcing would mean the temperature today is from the forcing in CO2 in 1985, 345ppm.

(5.35 ln (400/280) = 1.1168382542W/m2

A climate sensitivity of 3ºC/doubling yields a climate sensitivity of 0.81ºC per 1W/m2.

(1.1168382542 x 0.81 = 0.904638986ºC

So in answer to your question, no, it is not good evidence for a climate sensitivity of 1ºC.

Swood1000

So your calculations are to take into consideration the lag response? If we say that from point A to point B there was a doubling of CO₂, then we could measure the difference in temperatures between which two points in time to discover the climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO₂?

SkyHunter

That has been done in the paleoclimate analysis of climate sensitivity, which is in general agreement with other estimates of 3ºC/doubling.

In order to measure climate sensitivity for doubling you need to start with a steady state climate, force it with 3.7W/m2 until it again reaches a steady state and then observe the change in temperature.

Not possible except with climate models.

Swood1000

“The more commonly used measure of climate sensitivity is the so-called CO₂ doubling temperature ΔT₂ₓ, the equilibrium temperature increase that would result from a sustained doubling of atmospheric CO₂. This quantity is related to S as ΔT₂ₓ = F₂ₓS, where F₂ₓ, the forcing by doubled CO₂, is approximately 3.7 W m⁻². Forcing by incremental concentrations of long-lived GHGs over the industrial period (to 2005) is about 2.6 W m⁻² (Fig. 1), which is roughly 70% of F₂ₓ. Such a forcing, together with the IPCC best estimate of ΔT₂ₓ (i.e., 3 K), would thus suggest that the increase in GMST should have been about 2.1 K, well in excess of the observed increase (Solomon et al. 2007) of about 0.8 K (Fig. 2).” http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/pubs/SchwartzJClimate10WhyHasnt.pdf, page 2454

Schwartz seems to be saying that since the forcing by doubled CO₂ is 3.7 W m⁻², if over a period of time there is an actual forcing of 2.6 W m⁻², since this is 70% of 3.7 W m⁻² one should see 70% of the temperature increase that would be seen on a doubling of CO₂. Am I understanding him correctly?

SkyHunter

No. Look at Figure 1.

Schwartz is including all LLGHG(long-lived greenhouse gases) in his 2.7W/m2 estimate, CO2, CH4, N2O, and CFC’s. He estimates CO2 forcing as only 1.75W/m2.

CO2 was ~388ppm when that research was conducted, so using the IPCC forcing equation for CO2 F = 5.35 ln(388/280) solves as 1.74525419W/m2.

Swood1000

Schwartz is including all LLGHG(long-lived greenhouse gases) in his 2.7W/m2 estimate, CO2, CH4, N2O, and CFC’s. He estimates CO2 forcing as only 1.75W/m2.

Yes, but isn’t he saying this:

1. the forcing by doubled CO₂ is 3.7 W m⁻²

2. as a result of a combination of CO₂ and the other LLGHGs, we have achieved a forcing of 2.6 W m⁻², which is 70% of the forcing by doubling CO₂

3. Since we have 70% of the forcing that we would have by doubling CO₂ we should have 70% of the temperature increase that we would have by doubling CO₂

How else does he arrive at this statement:

“…the increase in GMST should have been about 2.1 K…”

SkyHunter

Look again at Figure 1. The total forcing is 1.7W/m2, not 2.6W/m2. Anthropogenic emissions of aerosols is a negative forcing.

And again, the climate takes long time to reach equilibrium temperature.

Swood1000

How does Schwartz reach the figure of “2.1 K” except as follows:

1. IPCC said that a doubling of CO₂ would result in a 3 K increase in temperature.

2. We have had 70% of the forcing that would be involved with a doubling of CO₂.

3. Therefore we should have a warming of 70% of 3 K, or 2.1 K.

SkyHunter

Read the whole paper, that is not what he is saying.

The 2.1ºK does not include aerosols.

Swood1000

The 2.1ºK does not include aerosols.

I understand that. He is saying that we account for the fact that we don’t see a 2.1 K warming by some combination of (a) aerosols and (b) an error in the climate sensitivity assumptions that led us to the conclusion that a doubling of CO₂ would result in a warming of 3 K.

But he is saying that without an influence by aerosols, and without an error in our sensitivity assumption, we should see a 2.1 K warming.

If I am wrong about that, what is the 2.1 K figure for?

SkyHunter

That is what he is saying. But since aerosols are present, there is no reason to expect 2.1ºK warming.

Swood1000

But since aerosols are present, there is no reason to expect 2.1ºK warming

Let me rephrase my original question. Do you agree that if, over the period when we have had the equivalent of a 70% increase in CO₂, we have had an increase in temperature of 0.7⁰C, then absent aerosols this would be good evidence that the climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO₂ is 1⁰C?

SkyHunter

But those conditions do not exist, so why are you asking for such speculation?

Additionally, there is still the thermal inertia of the climate system to consider.

Swood1000

I am just asking if we agree that if a doubling of CO₂ will result in a warming of X, then 70% of the forcing involved in a doubling of CO₂ will result in a warming of 0.7X.

SkyHunter

Yes, we agree.

Swood1000

My dog says she has waited long enough and it’s time to go to the dog park now. Talk to you later.

SkyHunter

I am a steward for our local park. Dogs are prohibited but we don’t enforce it.

Swood1000

In the summertime I take her to an actual local dog park that has a pond and a dock that she can jump off of. She loves it. In the winter I take her to another local park where dogs are supposed to be on leash ($500 fine) but we live dangerously. That’s why I got a Golden Retriever instead of a Doberman – people don’t call the Sheriff’s office when they see her coming.

Swood1000

Dog park

Swood1000

(0.7÷2.7=0.259ºC)

In this equation, 0.7 is the increase in temperature? What are the 2.7 and the 0.259?

SkyHunter

The climate sensitivity equation is: (dT = λ*dF)

dT is change in temperature ºC or more appropriately ºK, since kelvin is an absolute scale, although for our purpose here it doesn’t matter.

λ is climate sensitivity in ºK per 1W/m2.

dF is the change in forcing in W/m2.

0.7ºK is dT

2.7W/m2 is dF

I just reversed it.

(dT ÷ dF = λ

Swood1000

There is apparently an issue involving access to the data that supports published papers dealing with climate change. People use the FOIA to try to force access. Steve McIntyre on climateaudit.org is a great raconteur of these stories, particularly as they relate to Michael Mann. Are scientists justified in withholding their data? If so, what is the justification?

Apart from the FOIA issue there have been other instances where scientists were reluctant to disclose their data. Infamously,

“…We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try to find something wrong with it…” —Dr. Phil Jones, Director of the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University, email to Warwick Hughes, 2004

Are you not aware of any such reluctance?

SkyHunter

Of course I am aware of it. The denial industry was looking for fodder to feed their misinformation campaign.

These people are not scientists, they are propagandists.

Swood1000

So what’s the bottom line here? Are they justified in refusing to reveal the data if the people requesting it are heathens who are simply trying to undermine it for ignoble purposes? I can see them refusing to spend any time explaining it to anyone but if the data is valid, and is being relied upon for scientific purposes, I don’t understand how the refusal to disclose it can be justified.

“In 2007 [Jones] told colleagues that, having seen what McIntyre’s Climate Audit blog was doing, UEA had been turning down FOIA requests associated with the blog. The scientists concerned saw such requests as disrupting the time available for their work, and those making them as nitpicking to suit an agenda rather than trying to advance scientific knowledge.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Information_requests_to_the_Climatic_Research_Unit

SkyHunter

Not justified, but understandable. When FOIA requests are part of coordinated effort to disrupt public research, as the commission(s) tasked with investigating the incident found, then it is understandable why the scientists would be reluctant to cooperate with people attempting to destroy their careers because they don’t like the results of their research.

Swood1000

Wasn’t this the issue with Michael Mann’s “hockey stick”? According to his detractors he not only would not divulge the actual original data but would not divulge the details of how he calculated his results.

SkyHunter

All of Mann’s work has been released to the public.

They are still telling lies that the hockey stick has been debunked, when the truth is it has been validated over and over by every global reconstruction since. So I would take what they tell you at CA, WUWT, BT, and JC with a salt mine.

Swood1000

One of the favorite charges made against Mann is the “hide the decline” one, which alleges that he cut off one of his proxies in a way that would not be noticed simply because the proxy was not in harmony with the blade of his hockey stick (removed the last part of the gold line below). What is your view of this? If the proxy conflicted with modern temperature records then why assume that the earlier part of it was valid? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BQpciw8suk

SkyHunter

Keith Briffa documented the decline in 1997/98. Tree growth, especially at higher latitudes, is a good proxy for temperature. However, something happened in the latter half of the 20th century that caused these proxies to diverge around 1960. He warned that use of these proxies would result in an overestimation of past temperature.

In order to get around the problem, Mann substituted the instrumental record for the proxy data in his reconstruction. It is the instrumental record which is the blade of the hockey stick.

Since there is no discrepancy with any of the other proxy data, we know that the problem is only with the tree ring proxies after 1960.

Swood1000

You referenced a paper by Craig Loehle but he does not appear to be entirely on-board with Mann et al.:

Craig Loehle | February 23, 2011 at 10:01 am |

There are multiple issues, not just a choice of how to present a graph:
1.Subjective choice of trees/sites for sampling
2.Post-hoc dropping of “non-responders”
3.Linear response to temp assumption (which is actually known to be false.) which makes the inverse problem undefined.
4.Ignoring six sigma outliers like Yamal larch which heavily affect the result
5.Hiding adverse verification statistics (R-sq of 0.05 means you have nada)
6.Unjustified weighting (bristlecones 400x others)
7.Proxies different orientations (+ vs – temp indicator) in different time periods of the recon.
8.Choosing graph baseline to emphasize post-1980 “warm”
9.End point padding-even worse with instrumental data
10.Hiding the decline as discussed above
11.Thick red line for instrumental data to make it look “hot” and to hide lines underneath that are going down.
12.Repeated use of “robust”, “similar”, “reliable” with no quantification. http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/22/hiding-the-decline/

SkyHunter

Yes Craig Loehle is a denier. The difference is, I referenced his published research, you referenced his opinion.

One is supported by evidence, the other by personal bias.

Swood1000

So he’s competent to explain the science underlying the divergence issue but not to evaluate whether Mann handled the issue properly in his study?

SkyHunter

He can say whatever it is he believes on JC’s blog. It is just his opinion unsupported by any credible evidence. If he had credible evidence he would publish it in the journals and discredit Mann. Instead he rants and raves on denier blogs, discrediting himself instead.

Swood1000

just his opinion insuported by any credible evidence

But that is one of the valuable things about experts: their ability to evaluate facts and give their opinions. His issues 1 through 9 appear to be scientifically based, while issues 11 and 12 seem to depend more on one’s point of view. Do you have a view on his issues 1 – 9?

SkyHunter

He does not prove the accusation 1-9, he just makes them. If he could prove them he would, but he can’t.

I don’t know what reconstruction he is talking about here, there have been many. All multi-proxy reconstructions have the same shape, whether tree rings are used or not, so his rant about tree rings is irrelevant.

Science is never correct. Each advancement simply makes us less wrong. I prefer to focus on legitimate criticism that advances science.

Swood1000

And his issue 10 appears to be his evaluation that Mann was not justified in his handling of the proxy in this case.

SkyHunter

But the fact that he is writing in the comment section of a denier blog, instead of responding to the published research should tell you it is not a robust opinion. Remove the tree ring data and you still get the same results.

Swood1000

it is not a robust opinion

I agree with you there, but then many journals will not give space to such “denier” opinions.

Remove the tree ring data and you still get the same results.

But a scientist is not justified in using compromised data or in reporting his results in a misleading way (if that is what he did) just because his results turn out to be valid.

SkyHunter

He did not use compromised data, the tree rings proxies do not diverge until humans start altering the ecosystem. The compromised data is tree ring growth after 1960. Mann truncated the proxy data and substituted the more robust instrumental record. He didn’t hide it, he published it in Nature magazine.

Swood1000

He did not use compromised data, the tree rings proxies do not diverge until humans start altering the ecosystem.

But the reason for the divergence is all speculation. There is no compelling explanation. That raises both a data integrity issue and a disclosure issue. Can data showing this kind of divergence be relied on? It would seem that Mann should have at least disclosed what he was doing and why.

The justification for hiding the decline was that somehow there was something different about that data in that time period that made it “bad” data, and so could be dropped. But nothing was ever shown to be the cause, and one can’t simply get rid of data you don’t like without a verified reason. And people can see this clearly. …

But that’s the allegation: that he not only removed the end of the proxy in order to hide it but also used improper statistical methods in the process:

Although Mann and others have regularly described his “Nature” trick as nothing more than plotting both instrumental and reconstruction data in the same graphic, the “trick” was more than that: it was, as shown above, the splicing of instrumental data with proxy data prior to smoothing. On one occasion however, Mann implictly conceded the Climate Audit exegesis of his Nature trick, stating in an inline comment at realclimate as follows:

In some earlier work though (Mann et al, 1999), the boundary condition for the smoothed curve (at 1980) was determined by padding with the mean of the subsequent data (taken from the instrumental record).

It appears as if Mann wanted a nice flat hockey stick that contrasted with the stark “blade” in the 20th century. And it appears that he wanted to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period because that would suggest that the current warming was not unprecedented.

I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards ‘apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data’ …(Briffa, Sep 22, 1999, 0938031546.txt)

So it appears that he chose his proxies to minimize the MWP.

One of the consequences of divergence is that past periods warmer than the calibration period can not be reliably estimated-they are suppressed. The the MWP will be underestimated. A second problem is that past responses of trees will be influenced by things like local forest conditions and precip, about which we have not data. This makes them unreliable. http://judithcurry.com/2011/02/22/hiding-the-decline/

Swood1000

McIntyre and McKitrick published a paper, http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/mcintyre_02.pdf, in which they claim that the hockey stick blade was the result of the inclusion of a single group of bristlecone pine chronologies published by Graybill and Idso in 1993 that the original authors had stressed are not proper climate proxies. Without these proxies there is no blade on the hockey stick and the MWP returns. See image below.

In addition, they found, on Mann’s FTP site, a folder called “CENSORED” which contained the data without the Graybill and Idso bristlecone pines, showing, they say, that Mann had done this experiment himself and knew that the hockey stick shape depended on that one group. http://a-sceptical-mind.com/Documents/McKitrick-hockeystick.pdf

It was the early days of the climate denial industry. Everyone is wise to them now, and they have no credibility within the scientific community.

Swood1000

He didn’t hide it…

Contrary to claims by various climate scientists, the IPCC Third Assessment Report did not disclose the deletion of the post-1960 values. Nor did it discuss the “divergence problem”. Yes, there had been previous discussion of the problem in the peer-reviewed literature (Briffa et al 1998) – a point made over and over by Gavin Schmidt and others. But not in the IPCC Third Assessment Report. Nor was the deletion of the declining values reported or disclosed in the IPCC Third Assessment Report. http://climateaudit.org/2009/12/10/ipcc-and-the-trick/

SkyHunter

The data was not deleted, and the TAR discusses and references all the literature available on the subject at the time.

CA is lying about it because they can. They don’t need credibility to make money.

Several important caveats must be borne in mind when using tree-ring data for palaeoclimate reconstructions. Not least is the intrinsic sampling bias. Tree-ring information is available only in terrestrial regions, so is not available over substantial regions of the globe, and the climate signals contained in tree-ring density or width data reflect a complex biological response to climate forcing. Non-climatic growth trends must be removed from the tree-ring chronology, making it difficult to resolve time-scales longer than the lengths of the constituent chronologies (Briffa, 2000). Furthermore, the biological response to climate forcing may change over time. There is evidence, for example, that high latitude tree-ring density variations have changed in their response to temperature in recent decades, associated with possible non-climatic factors (Briffa et al., 1998a). By contrast, Vaganov et al. (1999) have presented evidence that such changes may actually be climatic and result from the effects of increasing winter precipitation on the starting date of the growing season (see Section 2.7.2.2). Carbon dioxide fertilization may also have an influence, particularly on high-elevation drought-sensitive tree species, although attempts have been made to correct for this effect where appropriate (Mann et al., 1999). Thus climate reconstructions based entirely on tree-ring data are susceptible to several sources of contamination or non-stationarity of response. For these reasons, investigators have increasingly found tree-ring data most useful when supplemented by other types of proxy information in �multi-proxy� estimates of past temperature change (Overpeck et al., 1997; Jones et al., 1998; Mann et al., 1998; 1999; 2000a; 2000b; Crowley and Lowery, 2000).

McIntyre downloaded datasets for MBH99 from a ftp server, but could not locate the ftp site for MBH98 datasets and on 8 April wrote to Mann to request this information. Following email exchanges, Mann’s assistant sent the information as text files around 23 April 2003.

Swood1000

Apparently this issue is not unique to this case.

Unfortunately, we have since found this poor disclosure of data and methods is not an isolated situation in paleoclimatology. Other studies have an even worse record. Steve has contacted numerous paleoclimatologists in search of their data and has a thick file of excuses, dismissals, and brushoffs, along with a few honorable exceptions. Nor is the situation unique to paleoclimatology. Two economists recently took a 1999 edition of the American Economic Review and tried to replicate the empirical papers, only to find most authors unwilling or unable to share their data and command files in a usable format. http://fakeclimate.com/arquivos/Internacional/RossMcKitrick/Stattered.Consensus.Ch2.pdf

SkyHunter

Perhaps, but it is not evidence of a broad conspiracy, as the denier propagandists would like us to believe.

Swood1000

it is not evidence of a broad conspiracy

Not at all. It is evidence that journals need to require that the data supporting a study be made available to those who wish to see if the data really support the conclusion.

SkyHunter

As someone who works both inside and outside of the system, what you are asking is somewhat naive. But I agree that information should all be open source. Some day when we realize that cooperation is better than competition, that will be a no-brainer. As long as we live in a competitive society where hoarding information brings wealth and power, people will continue to hoard information.

I believe you will find most of them have such a policy. But not all data is public domain. Often it is purchased for use under a non-disclosure agreement.

Swood1000

In your experience, what is the percentage of published studies in which the actual data is made available?

Swood1000

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Swood1000

The lower the impact of aerosols the lower the climate sensitivity to CO₂, right?

“It is concluded that at the sites studied changes in cloud cover rather than anthropogenic aerosols emissions played the major role in determining solar dimming and brightening during the last half century and that there are reasons to suppose that these findings may have wider relevance.” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2013JD021308/abstract

SkyHunter

That is consistent with the findings of this study.

Here, we provide evidence from observations and numerical modeling of a dramatic aerosol effect on warm clouds. We propose that convective-cloud invigoration by aerosols can be viewed as an extension of the concept of aerosol-limited clouds, where cloud development is limited by the availability of cloud-condensation nuclei. A transition from pristine to slightly polluted atmosphere yields estimated negative forcing of ~15 watts per square meter (cooling), suggesting that a substantial part of this anthropogenic forcing over the oceans occurred at the beginning of the industrial era, when the marine atmosphere experienced such transformation.

Human aerosol emissions invigorate the cloud formation process, so it is not surprising that this group found a change in cloud cover accompanied an change in aerosols.

Swood1000

An argument against clean air laws?

SkyHunter

Not one I would care to make.

Swood1000

So when the study says

It is concluded that at the sites studied changes in cloud cover rather than anthropogenic aerosols emissions played the major role in determining solar dimming and brightening…

are you concluding that when they refer to “anthropogenic aerosols” they are not including those aerosols that may have invigorated the cloud formation process?

SkyHunter

They found that change in cloud cover resulted in solar dimming.

The study I cited concludes that changes in cloud cover were driven by anthropogenic emissions of aerosols.

Swood1000

They found that change in cloud cover resulted in solar dimming.

A change in cloud cover “rather than” by the effects of anthropogenic aerosols. And you are proposing that they are only including the direct effects of aerosols and not the indirect effects.

SkyHunter

I am not going to purchase their paper, so yes, I am concluding from the abstract that they did not include convective cloud invigoration from aerosols in their study.

Swood1000

rises sharply when El Nino is predominant.

How much of the rise in temperature as the result of an El Niño is attributable to human-induced climate change?

SkyHunter

That question makes no sense.

Swood1000

Do we see an El Niño as an event that suddenly causes all the heat to be displayed in the atmosphere that had heretofore been swept west and then down into the deep ocean?

SkyHunter

Yes. That is exactly what an El Nino is, a weakening of the trade winds, allowing the warmed surface water to remain at the surface, warming the troposphere through increased thermal emission.

Swood1000

flat when La Nina is predominant, rises sharply when El Nino is predominant

How do we distinguish between warming caused by El Niño and warming caused by humans?

SkyHunter

El Nino does not cause global warming, it just moves heat around, it is internal variability. Internal variability trends to zero over time, which is why the CO2 signal in the GMST takes decades to achieve statistical significance. The oceans, being spatially larger take less time to produce a statistically significant signal.

Swood1000

If we have an El Niño this year we will experience warming and people will attribute it to global warming. Should the response be that this is not global warming, this is El Niño?

SkyHunter

Yes. The CO2 signal is not visible in the internal variation from the mean. The fact that a weak El Nino will set a new global temperature record is the evidence that the mean is changing. Strong La Nina events do not set record cold global temperatures, yet weak El Nino events do.

Swood1000

Is it impossible that ENSO processes could impact the amount of heat that is retained by the earth?

SkyHunter

ENSO processes definitely impact the amount of heat retained by the earth, only it is La Nina that accumulates heat, and El Nino that sheds it.

Swood1000

ENSO processes definitely impact the amount of heat retained by the earth, only it is La Nina that accumulates heat, and El Nino that sheds it.

Then do ENSO processes always net out to zero?

SkyHunter

Net warming defined how and over what time frame?

Swood1000

Net warming such that warming caused by ENSO could be termed AGW.

SkyHunter

No. ENSO is just internal variability, the long negative pattern is not that unusual.

AGW is a century scale forcing. The cool cycles damp the warming signal in the GMST record, but since the heat is still accumulating, cooler surface temperatures equal less radiant heat leaving the planet. The cool cycles actually heat the planet more than the warm cycles.

I imported the numbers into an Excel spreadsheet. All the numbers through June of 2014 sum to 19.884. They have another table here: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei.ext/table.ext.html. The numbers on that table are “normalized” so that they have an average of zero and a standard deviation of “1”. And their total in Excel is actually zero. Do you suppose that the first one contains the raw numbers so that there is actually a net positive?

SkyHunter

Very good. You should be able to see now from the method on analysis that ENSO is internal variability, not a climate forcing. The average is set to zero and the standard deviation is one.

There are no raw numbers, the 1950 – present MEI is normalized over the 1950 – 1993 period.

Swood1000

If they adjust the numbers so that the average is zero. they’re just artificially forcing red to equal blue?

SkyHunter

They are not adjusting the numbers, they are using a statistical technique to analyze the numbers.

Swood1000

But in one table Dec-Jan 1950 is -1.018. In the other table that same period is -0.941. In the table you sent, each period from 1950 through 1993 totals to zero. Is there no value in knowing whether the raw numbers actually total to zero?

And what about the fact that the totals for 1871 through 1938 equal -116.998 and the totals for 1939 through 2005 equal +116.998?

SkyHunter

There are no raw numbers per se, the MEI numbers are all extrapolated.

Swood1000

So we can’t know from these numbers whether red plus blue for any period equals zero.

SkyHunter

But these numbers are for analyzing an oscillation, red plus blue is supposed to equal zero.

El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the most important coupled ocean-atmosphere phenomenon to cause global climate variability on interannual time scales. Here we attempt to monitor ENSO by basing the Multivariate ENSO Index (MEI) on the six main observed variables over the tropical Pacific. These six variables are: sea-level pressure (P), zonal (U) and meridional (V) components of the surface wind, sea surface temperature (S), surface air temperature (A), and total cloudiness fraction of the sky (C). These observations have been collected and published in ICOADS for many years. The MEI is computed separately for each of twelve sliding bi-monthly seasons (Dec/Jan, Jan/Feb,…, Nov/Dec). After spatially filtering the individual fields into clusters (Wolter, 1987), the MEI is calculated as the first unrotated Principal Component (PC) of all six observed fields combined. This is accomplished by normalizing the total variance of each field first, and then performing the extraction of the first PC on the co-variance matrix of the combined fields (Wolter and Timlin, 1993). In order to keep the MEI comparable, all seasonal values are standardized with respect to each season and to the 1950-93 reference period.

I took the table from this location: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/enso/mei/rank.html where they ranked each period, with a 1 being the strongest La Niña and 64-65 being the strongest El Niño. I converted them into a zero-based system by subtracting 32 from each number. The years 1950 through 1981 totaled -1234.5. The years 1982 through 2013 totaled 1786.5. More El Niños in recent years?

SkyHunter

These are rankings, not actual indices.

Swood1000

Yes, but the lower the rank the colder that period? If one year averaged a one and another year averaged a 64 you could say that the second year was warmer?

SkyHunter

Well for starters, you have all positive numbers, so simply subtracting 32 normalizes to 1 not zero.

But irregardless, what is it you are trying to discover?

The ENSO process increases ocean heat uptake during cool phases, not warm phases. Since the 1998 El Nino, the ENSO cycle has been cool.

Swood1000

But irregardless, what is it you are trying to discover?

Whether there has been more red since 1982 and more blue before.

SkyHunter

You are looking for a trend in detrended data.

You need to use this data, since it is normalized over the entire 135 years. Compare 1953- 1982 with 1983-2012.

That data only went up to 2005 so I compared 1952-1978 (total -30.831) with 1979-2005 (total 145.522).

You are looking for a trend in detrended data.

But in the data that contains rankings suppose we found, for example, that 1950-1981 contained all the lowest rankings (the La Niñas) and that 1982-2013 contained all the highest rankings (the El Niños). Couldn’t we deduce something interesting from that?

SkyHunter

Well we can deduce that El Ninos are associated with warm global temperatures and La Ninas with cool global temperatures, and that ENSO trends reflect GMST trends over short time frames.

Swood1000

And if one span of 31 years had only La Niñas and another span had only El Niños you wouldn’t use that information to explain why one span of years was warmer than the other?

SkyHunter

That explanation ignores the underlying trend. It warmed during La Niñas and it warmed faster during El Niños.

Swood1000

Suppose the underlying trend would cause the second period to be 0.2C⁰ warmer but we find that the second period is 0⁰ warmer. If the second period contained only La Niñas and the first only El Niños then we would have a possible explanation, right?

SkyHunter

Yes. The next step though is to quantify the differences. How much heat is fluctuating in the atmosphere from changing SST in the tropics, and how much is needed to close the heat budget.

Swood1000

So if we look at a ranking of years and find that one period contained more of the high rankings for La Niñas and the other period contained more of the high rankings for El Niños then that would explain at least part of the temperature difference between the two periods?

SkyHunter

Yes.

Swood1000

Actually, I made an error in this calculation. When I corrected it and subtracted 33 from each number I got -1618.5 for 1950-81, and 1402.5 for 82-05. For the hiatus period and the one just before it:

It is extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together. The best estimate of the human induced contribution to warming is similar to the observed warming over this period.

Didn’t say it wasn’t there. A new paper by Huber & Knutti has found that from 1998 to 2012, ocean cycles caused about 0.06°C global surface cooling, the sun caused 0.04°C, and volcanoes caused 0.035°C cooling. Add that to the 0.17ºC found in C&W and you have 0.305ºC warming trend, consistent with a 3ºC/doubling climate sensitivity. Internal variability means we will have periods where it warms slower than average, and periods where it warms faster than average. But the average trend over time is consistent.

You are assuming that I have a camp and that said camp cares about the opinions expressed by it’s hypothetical members.

Swood1000

It’s the “97%” camp. This fellow is going to find out, as did Judith Curry and Roger Pielke, Jr., what comes from expressions showing less than full adherence to the party line. At the very least, saying that the long-term climate response “could be small,” without defining that, will be considered an inexcusable providing of ammunition to the enemy, if not a joining of the enemy.

It seems to me that this “Kinne” character’s words are disingenuous, and he probably supports what De Freitas is trying to do. It seems clear we have to go above him. I think that the community should, as Mike H has previously suggested in this eventuality, terminate its involvement with this journal at all levels–reviewing, editing, and
submitting, and leave it to wither way into oblivion and disrepute,
Thanks,
mike

Do you agree with some journals that “skeptic” articles should not be accepted because such articles inherently and of necessity lack credibility?

SkyHunter

Now you are just making a specious argument. That mainstream scientists started pushing back against those employed by the Western Fuels Association is not evidence of scientific misconduct. The fact that Soon’s hypothesis’ have been thoroughly debunked and revealed to be nonsense is not evidence of a scientific conspiracy against deniers.

It is the logical and predicted outcome as the scientific method exposes the errors and outright fraud from the denier camp.

All good scientists are skeptics. Deniers are not skeptics, they uncritically accept any evidence that supports their position, and uncritically reject any evidence to the contrary. They are not skeptics, they are deniers, because they must deny the bulk of the evidence in order to maintain their position.

Research should be accepted on it’s merits only. Some very bad and completely meritless papers are published in marginal science journals all the time. Some even make it into the main science journals.

Swood1000

Deniers are not skeptics, they uncritically accept any evidence that supports their position, and uncritically reject any evidence to the contrary.

Is it possible to be sceptical of global warming and not be a “denier”?

SkyHunter

Absolutely. But when they repeat denier talking points on their blogs, they self-identify with the science denial industry. And it is an industry, one that is well documented and pre-dates the AGW issue.

Swood1000

they uncritically accept any evidence that supports their position, and uncritically reject any evidence to the contrary

Most true believers, especially those who see themselves in a war with the infidels, are prejudiced to some degree toward their own position. They have heretofore found their own position to be believable, and contrary information creates cognitive dissonance that is uncomfortable. Those on both sides are guilty of excesses, including rejecting contrary information uncritically.

These people are not climate scientists. And their statements are climate denier talking points, not scientific arguments, so yes, I would consider them to be climate science deniers.

Swood1000

I’m having trouble distinguishing between the legitimate sceptic and the denier. It seem that if a person says that the urgency of global warming alarmism has not been demonstrated to him you say that he is repeating “denier talking points” and that makes him a denier. Maybe the key is that they “self-identify with the science denial industry.” Where can I find out more about the science denial industry?

Well, I read your article. Actually, by “science denial industry” I expected to find more evidence for a conspiracy or at least for these people being on the payroll of the evildoers. Here they were just presented as wrong-headed liars with connections to the oil industry. Also, whenever I read an article that has this tone, no matter who is writing it, I usually assume that much of it is exaggerated or one-sided. I operate the same way when reading any vituperative article, whether or not I support the writer’s position. It’s like listening to a politician talking about the other party. It might be comforting to hear if you support his position but realistically you realize that you’re only hearing one side, that others would describe these events much differently, and that you have to take it with a grain of salt.

Swood1000

those employed by the Western Fuels Association

This, of course, is an ad hominem argument: Soon’s argument should fail because he is a bad person.

And doesn’t it cut both ways? The more that global warming alarm is stoked, the more federal funds will be available for various studies.

SkyHunter

Soon’s argument fails on it’s own merits.

That does not change the fact that Willie Soon’s opinion is bought and paid for by fossil fuel interests.

Swood1000

People motivated by money do not generally become scientists.

People nevertheless are strongly motivated to become scientists, and conducting studies is a big part of that. It order to conduct a study they need grant money. Studies that find that global warming is a grave national emergency cause more federal grant money to be available. Putting a global warming component into a study will make it eligible for these funds.

SkyHunter

Not really, and it means the scientist would have to research something other than what they are passionate about. It is just not a prime motivating factor.

Swood1000

If there is a great deal of grant money available for studying X, and even more grant money becomes available when there is a finding that X is true, and if there is very little available to study Y, then scientists who are interested in both X and Y will be drawn to X, and encouraged to find that X is true.

SkyHunter

But that is pure conjecture. There is plenty of evidence for the fossil fuel funding of denial. None for your hypothesis.

Here is the thing. If a scientists says X is true and it turns out X is false, they lose credibility and future funding. The motivation in science is to discover something that no one else has. There is no greater sin in science than being overconfident in tenuous results.

Swood1000

If a scientists says X is true and it turns out X is false, they lose credibility and future funding.

But if a scientist only says that he proposes to find out if X is true then he does not lose credibility if X turns out not to be true. If, however, by finding that X is true he receives much recognition and acclaim and further funding, then that is a motivation for studying X and for finding that X is true.

None for your hypothesis.

But my hypothesis relies only on human nature and common sense. Scientists need funding. They are motivated to do the things necessary to acquire funding. You say that the “denier” scientists are willing to sacrifice their honor for funding but the non-denier scientists are not. I just don’t see how you are able to make that distinction.

SkyHunter

The deniers are not after funding for research, that would mean a lot of hard work. They don’t have to prove a null-hypothesis, just create doubt for the propaganda market.

The distinction is very clear. One group is still driven by need to know, the other is clearly not.

Which is why one group is actively doing research, while the other is doing PR work.

Swood1000

the hockey stick is the shape of the data, no matter what global proxies or methodology is used.

As long as the data does not contain a Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice Age. But then in a later study, which we already talked about, he acknowledged the existence of a MWP, so I’m not sure what’s going on there. It is alleged that he chose his proxies, and chose his statistical procedures, to eliminate the MWP.

coincidentally threatened the wealth of some of the most wealthy and powerful private interests that the world has ever known.

I assume this will be covered in that link you sent me earlier.

SkyHunter

Mann never denied the existence of either the LIA or the MWP. They are both evident in his reconstructions.

Swood1000

He just denied that the temperature during the MWP or LIA would be significantly different from the temperatures of the surrounding periods?

Swood1000

The deniers are not after funding for research, that would mean a lot of hard work.

Well, either this is true or their scientific work is bought and paid for by the forces of darkness, but not both.

SkyHunter

They don’t have any scientific work to speak of. It is their opinions that are bought and paid for, they don’t need to do research, just manufacture doubt.

Swood1000

Is any scientific work that draws a non-alarmist conclusion by definition of no value?

SkyHunter

I had a conversation with our friend at PopTech a few years ago.

Most of those papers at PopTech do not dispute the consensus position. Those that do are not credible or peer-reviewed.

And as for his standard for what constitutes a peer-reviewed journal… One of the papers he listed was actually published in dog astrology journal.

Swood1000

Most of those papers at PopTech do not dispute the consensus position.

Is it the consensus position that global warming disaster is imminent?

SkyHunter

CAGW is a red herring. Most of the species alive today, including humans, evolved during a much colder climate. I believe the consensus position is that global warming disaster is already underway.

Swood1000

CAGW is a red herring.

global warming disaster is already underway

These two statements are contradictory according to my understanding of these terms. CAGW is global warming disaster.

What is the nature of the disaster about which there is consensus?

SkyHunter

CAGW is denier meme intended to shift the position from AGW isn’t happening, to it won’t be bad.

I can’t think of a single scientist not working for the denier industry in some capacity who believes climate disruption to be benign.

Swood1000

CAGW is denier meme intended to shift the position from AGW isn’t happening, to it won’t be bad.

You do recognize, don’t you, that there are many people who believe that there is warming going on, and that man has played a significant roll in that, but who believe that it is nothing to worry about?

And if you lump those people together with the people who believe that severe consequences are in store for us if we don’t change our ways, and then characterize the entire group as believing that severe consequences are in store for us, then that is deceptive.

I just don’t understand your refusal to see a practical distinction between those who think there is something to worry about and those who don’t.

SkyHunter

Of course I recognize it. I have been studying deniers and the evolution of their arguments for over a decade. Initially, global warming was an artifact of the urban heat island effect, and one volcanic eruption dwarfs human emissions. The denier arguments have evolved, now they admit it is happening but believe it won’t be bad.

There is no practical distinction. Suicide is suicide.

Swood1000

There is no practical distinction. Suicide is suicide.

This is the fallacy of equivocation, where I use “distinction” to refer to the difference in the beliefs of two people and you use it to refer to what you believe the result of their actions will be.

The charge is made that “alarmists” are being intentionally deceptive when they engage in another fallacy of equivocation. They say that 97% of scientists are on-board with AGW, knowing that many of those are not on-board that it is dangerous (or at least have not stated so). But the “alarmists” intentionally use “AGW” in a different sense that includes impending catastrophe, expecting people to think that there is much more support for this than has really been demonstrated.

I can think of no other reason why you would object to a distinction between AGW and CAGW.

Gary Slabaugh

As for one who is trying also to get to the root (radix, radical) of the matter… the most important focus ought to be assessing cautionary and precautionary risk and selective fitness.

I learned as an undergrad back in the mid 70’s that two natural cycles (carbon and phosphorus) were becoming imbalanced due to human economic and agricultural activities. Trade and farming are prehistoric activities so, it seems to me, they are inherently interconnected with both risk and fitness… in short… survival.

If you want to get radical, focus on survival, imo and fwiw.

Swood1000

I have not yet gotten to the point where I believe that our survival is imperiled.

Gary Slabaugh

I realize that survival/fitness is not in the forefront of most human animals’ consciousness.

You are probably aware of extinction level events of the geological past and the current Holocene extinction. You are probably also aware of the collapse of complex societies in the historical past.

I assume you are aware of the psychological concepts of psychic numbing, being inured to existential threats, and truth/reality being sometimes too hard or painful to bear.

And then there is the general rule to reserve judgement until sufficient evidence to infer a conclusion is available… but in the case of collapse or extinction most of the time the evidence is after the fact and not based on prescience.

So you are remaining skeptical of AGW theory based on the mistakes and blunders of the past?

Swood1000

That’s what keeps me from signing on before I see evidence that is distinct from what looks same as past climate variability.

Gary Slabaugh

OK… what sort of “past climate variability” is good enough for you? For approx 800,000 years, up until man-made CO2 emissions from the burning of fossilized/sequestered organic carbon, there has been a natural variability of between 180 and 280 ppm concentration of atmospheric CO2. Now CO2 is at 400 ppm and growing. That CO2 is a potent greenhouse gas and a multiplier of the most potent and predominant greenhouse gas, i.e. water vapor, is good science. Carbon dioxide is a known forcer for climate change based on physics and climate systems science. Or are these facts not in evidence or disputable?

What sort of evidence is going to be enough for you make a distinction between now and say… when Greenland was ice free? Using that example, are you waiting for an ice free Greenland to be observed by human eyes?

Swood1000

By “climate variability” I was not referring to CO2 variability. I was referring to temperature variability.

Carbon dioxide is a known forcer for climate change based on physics and climate systems science. Or are these facts not in evidence or disputable?

That CO2 is a greenhouse gas is not disputable. The dispute concerns what the effect of added CO2 will be on our climate. Will it be minor and benign, or will it be catastrophic?

Gary Slabaugh

When you look at temperature variability are you only looking at GMST, or are you also considering the thermal mass of the oceans?

Adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. OK. Are you convinced that it will result in warming? cooling? neither warming nor cooling? If you are convinced that the climate system will experience warming will the warming be minor, major, disastrous seems to be your line of questioning.

Do you think that the science is correct that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 results in a climate sensitivity of approx +3 degrees Celsius? or do you think that this calculation is a major mistake/ blunder? or are you uncertain/undecided?

Again, I need a link to the graph. Even a picture needs to be put into context.

Swood1000

What sort of evidence is going to be enough for you make a distinction between now and say… when Greenland was ice free?

Something different from the natural variation we have seen before. And model predictions that come true.

Gary Slabaugh

I believe that you misunderstand the nature and purpose of mathematical and computer models. Has not this been explained prior? Or do you just believe the explanation to be uncertain and/or unreliable? Do you believe that computer modeling is supposed to be so reliable as to be able to foretell specific future events/happenings? Specifically what model projections/trends are not coming true. http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models-intermediate.htm

Again, you are going to have to send a link with the graph. Even though a picture is worth a thousand words… I still need the words and the reference to go along with the picture. Thanks. Additionally do you think facts are unreliable? Do you believe scientists make huge mistakes/blunders while interpreting the facts, the data, the empirical observations associated with climate change? Is it a fact that Greenland is losing ice mass? Has Greenland lost ice mass prior? How is the rate of decline of ice mass different then as compared to now? How do you personally explain natural variation as opposed to anthropogenic variation?

Did you not post this image to CB or Sky Hunter? Did you get an explanation sufficient for your understanding, or no?

Swood1000

I believe that you misunderstand the nature and purpose of mathematical and computer models.

Perhaps you could explain it to me. When the models predict a rise in temperature and there is no rise in temperature I begin to lose faith in the process that produced those predictions. And when people say “We know we said that the temperature was going to rise and it didn’t but it will in the future so we need to take incredibly expensive drastic steps to stop it,” I am inclined to want to wait and see if the temperature really does rise before taking those steps.

Gary Slabaugh

What is temperature? If you limit your idea of temperature to GMST and ignore the thermal mass of the oceans, you are not thinking globally. Indeed, many deniers have displayed their irrationality by claiming that to look for the “missing heat” in the oceans is moving the goalposts, when thinking globally necessitates taking into account the thermal mass of the oceans and melting oceanic ice and melting ice caps. GMST is way too narrow of a focus. This is not that complex.

Swood1000

OK, but if the prediction is GMST and there is no increase in GMST but rather it is proposed that the additional heat really occurred but is now undetectable, then one starts to wonder which predictions one it to take seriously and literally.

Gary Slabaugh

Where in the literature does climate change and global warming limit itself to GMST?

It has not at all been shown that the deep ocean has heated up an amount equal to account for the hiatus heat. Measuring the temperature changes of the deep ocean is problematic. But if they say that X is going to happen and then X doesn’t happen but they say that Y happened instead, it makes one question the reliability of the process by which they are making these predictions.

Gary Slabaugh

Questioning the reliability of the process is fine. Expectations for which such processes are not designed is faulty. To find fault and then use the knowledge of the fault to improve the reliability of the methodology is part of the heuristic. To use fault as proof of failure of the methodology or process is irrational. Unless, of course, one has an agenda to attempt to prove the unreliability of modeling altogether. Then it’s rational AND devious.

Swood1000

To use fault as proof of failure of the methodology or process is irrational.

Nobody is saying the failure of the models proves that models are useless. What they are saying is that models have not yet shown themselves to be reliable, and so we do not yet rely on them.

Gary Slabaugh

So reliance on business as usual is a pragmatic strategy? To me it’s just an excuse to keep burning fossil fuels with wild abandon and see what the consequences are later. Short sighted and extremely stupid, esp in light of the science. The belief “that models have not yet shown themselves to be reliable” is not true. But it’s a tired and worn out denier meme.

Swood1000

The belief “that models have not yet shown themselves to be reliable” is not true.

What is your comment about this graphic?

Gary Slabaugh

If you want a fair and balanced perspective, look at the evidence of how well models have performed also. To predominately look at one side of the public debate is to allow confirmation bias over pattern recognition and prejudice to have the loudest voices. A true and independent inquirer spends as much time looking for evidence that he’s wrong as he spends searching for reasons he’s correct. Difficult but not impossible.

I assumed that you were engaged in free inquiry. I now doubt that my assumption was true. Mea culpa

Swood1000

I assumed that you were engaged in free inquiry.

I think that the best way of finding the flaws in an argument is to present the argument to somebody who opposes it and hear what he has to say. If I am buying a car and I want to know what is wrong with a certain model, the best way to find out is to ask a salesman for the car’s competition. This is what I am hoping for from you.

Gary Slabaugh

It seems to me that what you are looking for is flaws in the scientific model not in a model of car. This is getting back to the nature of the scientific method and how an autodidact can overcome his/her propensity toward scientific ignorance and what holds an individual back from scientific literacy.

The nature of argumentation in Western civilization goes all the way back to Platonic forms, pre-Socratic beliefs in powers greater than being virtuous, Aristotle’s episteme and his formalization of logic and his Nicomachean ethics.

The culmination of Western civilization, its pinnacle, is arguably the modern scientific revolution… with its major successes and minor setbacks and abject failures (I’m talking the development of weapons of mass destruction… not climate science just for emphasis sake).

There are older aspects of our civilization which seek to make science relativistic and submissive to it’s own prerogatives… such powers as religion and politics and economics. Why else the attack on modern science for ideological gain?

Swood1000

It seems to me that what you are looking for is flaws in the scientific model not in a model of car.

I don’t think so. The scientific method involves coming up with a theory and then running an experiment to test that theory. If the results do not support the theory then it needs to be revised or discarded.

The theory is that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere today will act to create a greenhouse effect and heat the earth. We don’t stop just because the theory has been announced. If I say that I wan’t to see the results, that I want to see the actual warming, I am not doubting science or the scientific method. I am doubting a particular scientific theory or the extent of it.

Gary Slabaugh

You want to see the actual warming. OK. Start looking for evidence of warming. Short of becoming a scientist yourself, look at what the scientists are observing. Are the oceans warming? Look for answers at NOAA. Is the GMST rising? Look for answers with the IPCC. Are the polar regions melting? Are glaciers retreating? Look for answers with the scientists who are studying glaciers and the polar regions. Again, look for the evidence. As I posted above… it’s available to all except those who do not wish to see.

It seems to me that you are not convinced that the scientists have the expertise to explain man-made GHG’s enhancing a naturally occurring greenhouse effect. Hence your mistrust of the scientific model for obtaining knowledge. What is the experiment, anyway? Human beings are using the atmosphere as a dump for the waste gases of burning sequestered organic carbon (fossil fuels) for energy. Let’s observe what happens. That’s the experiment in a nutshell.

It seems to me that you are not content with observations, though. You seem to want to interpret the observations with the aid of a belief system, viz a pattern of beliefs expressing (often symbolically) the characteristic or prevalent attitudes in a group or culture. You seemingly want to interpret the observations from the perspective of the deniers’ arguments. If that’s your strategy….

I’m not a very good or credible source though for arguing against the deniers’ arguments. Whatever happened with your dialogue with Sky Hunter? In spite of his brusque manner at times, did you find his arguments convincing, influential, persuasive, benignly manipulating?

Swood1000

I am continuing my dialog with SkyHunter. I find his input very useful.

Gary Slabaugh

Formulated any conclusions yet? Still at the wait-and-see & don’t-do-anything-prematurely standstill?

Swood1000

If the people making these predictions have a handle on this then why did they make the predictions shown in that graph?

Gary Slabaugh

Trial and error

Swood1000

Fine, but until they can show that their predictions come true more often than not I don’t think that we should be spending trillions of dollars based on them.

Gary Slabaugh

I predict that posting links to debunk your comments will probably be a waste of time

There are many potential threats. If a large meteor were to strike the earth the results would be much much worse than the worst case global warming scenario. Wouldn’t the avoidance of this danger take precedence if we are using the precautionary principle?

Gary Slabaugh

You misstated the worse case scenario of using sequestered organic carbon as an energy source and dumping the carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Ever heard of runaway greenhouse effect? It happened on Venus. Given a choice between a lifeless planet and a planet hit by a large meteor, how ought human beings approach risk management? Wait and see? Don’t worry about it, because enhanced greenhouse effect could NEVER really result in a Venus-like planet?

Swood1000

Look at the levels of CO2 we have had in the past, up to 25 times the Holocene average, without any runaway warming. Why do you think we will have runaway warming?

Gary Slabaugh

I’m not saying that burning 10X the earth’s fossil fuel reserves is feasible, but did your sources include the feed backs from methane hydrates and methane sequestered in permafrost and peat bogs and other sources? From increased concentrations of water vapor? From burning forests?

So you are saying that the Earth becoming a Venus-like planet is so improbable to not even consider it a worst case scenario? If you recall, I was comparing this worst case scenario with your example of the precautionary principle towards a large meteor impact

I brought it up as worst case scenario to compare it with your scenario of a meteor impact.
Biogenic activities plus feed backs are another story. From what I have read the IPCC is conservative and does not include all possible and probable feed backs in their reports

Swood1000

There is “virtually no chance” of a runaway greenhouse effect. On the other hand, everyone agrees that our planet has been devastated on at least one occasion by a meteor strike. Such strikes happen on a minor scale on a daily basis.

Gary Slabaugh

“Virtually no chance’ as long as feed backs are ignored

Swood1000

Is it a fact that Greenland is losing ice mass?

Yes

Has Greenland lost ice mass prior?

Yes

How is the rate of decline of ice mass different then as compared to now?

I don’t know.

How do you personally explain natural variation as opposed to anthropogenic variation?

Anthropogenic changes are caused by mankind, although for many anthropogenic changes there is no clear-cut way to tell whether it was that or whether it was a natural variation. One way would be to see if the current change seems to differ significantly from other events in natural history that were clearly natural.

Gary Slabaugh

Is mining ancient sunlight in the form of sequestered organic carbon, burning the carbon for source of a cheap energy, disposing of the waste products as greenhouse gases… is this natural? Is this a solid case for altering the climate? Yes, no, undecided?

Swood1000

is this natural?

No

Is this a solid case for altering the climate?

Not yet.

Gary Slabaugh

Well… at least you are consistent with the wait and see approach… to actually observe instead of take an educated guess at the results of the experiment human beings are conducting on the climate.

Swood1000

take an educated guess at the results of the experiment human beings are conducting on the climate.

I think this is the Big Green denial that Naomi Klein was talking about. It’s like an almost cavalier attitude toward an extreme cost, and toward the amount of evidence we need in order to justify that cost.

Gary Slabaugh

What are the “extreme costs” of CO2 emissions presently. I read it estimated at $84 a ton. What have you researched?

Swood1000

I am talking about the cost of CO2 mitigation. Here’s one estimate. Scroll down to the case studies.

Gary Slabaugh

So we ignore damages because mitigation is “too costly.” That’s an ignorant position for anyone to seriously consider

Swood1000

But the point is that it has not been shown that the cost of doing nothing is greater than nothing. But this estimate does deal with those costs.

Gary Slabaugh

It has not been shown to those who do not wish to see

Swood1000

It is all predictions from models whose predictions so far have been flawed. Let’s wait and see what actually happens.

Gary Slabaugh

The do-nothing while we wait-and-see approach is irrational in the face of the science already conducted. Additionally it’s seemingly obvious that your preoccupation with flaws instead of successes, with finding fault instead of knowledge gained, is non-logical. I know it’s a disciplined effort to overcome, i.e. transcend, doubt being confirmed by bias… but it’s possible.

And there is not a comment I can make or a link I can post which will change deep seated beliefs in a specific pattern recognition system reinforced by confirmation bias. It’s increasingly seemingly obvious that you are expressing the characteristic or prevalent attitude of a particular group or culture.

There is not anything which can be done from without. The work is inner work.

Did you not post this image to CB or Sky Hunter? Did you get an explanation sufficient for your understanding, or no?

I think the response was that this time it’s different.

Gary Slabaugh

What’s different? Natural variation vs man-made emissions?

Gary Slabaugh

Do you know the fundamental differences among denial, doubt, and skepticism?

Is your personal strategy which you might share with others the wait-and-see approach? From your link, do you think it wise to wait until the observed decadal mean temperature in Greenland exceeds the envelope of natural variability over the past 4000 years? Your link also referenced climate model protections, but you have already expressed your lack of confidence in modeling, correct?

So you really believe this is appropriate risk management? Do you have a contingency plan?

Gary Slabaugh

Specifically why is Judith Curry’s blog credible? Her credentials are in research submitted for peer review. Her blog reveals her personal opinions. Could she be trading her scientific credentials for personal credibility? Of course she could. So how do we get to the root of the the question Why? To gain a cult following? Is she channeling Ayn Rand?

The link you sent me has Judith Curry stating the following:

I argued [in a ‘debate’ with Kevin Trenberth] that there are very few facts [with regards to climate science], and that most of what passes for facts in the public debate (emphasis mine) on climate change is: inference from incomplete, inadequate and ambiguous observations; climate models that have been demonstrated not to be useful for most of the applications that they are used for; and theories and hypotheses that are competing with alternative theories and hypotheses.

J Curry is being disingenuous by deliberately confusing the scientific debate with the political one. The scientific epistemic IS the debate and HAS dealt with and IS continually dealing with a plethora of facts, real data, empirical observations. To imply otherwise is the worst sort of scientific un-professionalism. Shame on her.

Second, how plausible is it that AGW theory falls into the general category of “this marvelous story of scientific error and breakthrough”? If you are going to be a radical skeptic… it means walking that line between doubt and belief. It means being questioning, seeking, inquiring. It doesn’t mean seizing onto the uncertainty that is inherent in the scientific model. Are you really looking at plausibility skeptically? Only you can know for yourself.

Does Marcott show a flat hockey stick with no warm or cold periods? Do you believe that there were no warm or cold periods?

Gary Slabaugh

Wait. You link to a blog that you consider neither credible nor lacks credibility? Next time, to avoid confusion, you might link to a direct source (like the book) instead of commentary on a book referencing climate science skepticism (J Curry’s blog). Unless of course you are a fan of Curry.

The distinguishing feature of the scientific debate and the public debate is at least three fold. First has to do with scientific credentials. Credentials are much more important to scientists than the public grants to itself. Scientific Credentials are earned through hard work and academic scholarship.

Swood1000

Wait. You link to a blog that you consider neither credible nor lacks credibility?

I said that the link did not require credibility. I did not say that it was not credible. If I had linked to it in order to prove the scientific truth of an assertion then the link would need to be credible. I did not provide the link to prove the truth of anything that I thought you might dispute. Do you dispute that there have been scientific blunders?

Gary Slabaugh

Obviously there are ideas expressed in Judith Curry’s blog which are scientifically disputable. Just as obvious, simply because you did not say the link was not credible, does not necessarily conclude that you believe Judith Curry is a credible source for ideas. I would simply prefer straight-forward honesty, not double talk. Do you believe Judith Curry’s blog to be a credible source for ideas about climate science? or do you believe that the blog is not a credible source? or are you neutral? Linking to a source implies that you consider it a credible source, no? Otherwise you would link to a direct source, such as a direct link to the book itself about scientific blunders. The short rule is “Consider the source.”

I do not dispute that there have been scientific errors of judgement and poor hypothesizing by individual scientists. But the beauty and simplicity of the scientific method is that it’s self correcting. That’s why science is such a massive success story when it comes to progressive knowledge.

I dispute the idea that scientists participate in “group think.” I have full confidence that those people who make a truth claim that scientists (specifically climate scientists) are engaged in “group think” … those people who make that unjust accusation are themselves engaged in pseudo-science and have motivated reasons to merchandize political or religious doubt about the validity of the scientific methodology itself.

In fact I consider pseudo-science one of humanity’s most self destructive modern memes. And I consider denial of AGW theory not only suicidally self-destructive, but denial in the guise of skepticism to be pseudo-science. FWIW

Swood1000

I would simply prefer straight-forward honesty, not double talk.

I’m done interacting with people who must be abusive in order to express themselves. Take care.

Gary Slabaugh

Read it in context. Too much use of double negatives not to try to prove a point. It was just getting too convoluted. That’s what I meant by straight forward honesty instead of double talk. Plus I wanted to pin you down on your thinking in terms of what you do and don’t believe. That’s straight forward and requesting honesty too.

But if you would prefer to leave, that’s fine

Swood1000

Sorry. I had just received the final insult I was going to take from CB and probably overreacted to your post. I have decided that I am no longer going to continue a conversation with anyone who is rude or abusive. Why they insist on engaging in a mud fight is beyond me. And how a person could be so free with the term “liar” and with uninhibited character assassination in response to anyone who disagrees with him or her is a mystery.

Gary Slabaugh

I’m sorry too for coming across as rude or abusive. It wasn’t my intent

Gary Slabaugh

Whoa! That’s hardly abusive. Oh well. I guess abuse like beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Sorry to hurt your feelings

Swood1000

Do you believe Judith Curry’s blog to be a credible source for ideas about climate science?

Yes, definitely, although I did not link to it to support any proposition as an authoritative source.

I dispute the idea that scientists participate in “group think.”

What is group think?

Gary Slabaugh

I suppose then that if J Curry’s blog posting is not authoritative, that you believe that she is making an appeal to reason and logic in her posts. Is this credible? I disputed the blog post on the basis of deliberately confusing the scientific debate from the public debate. For those who believe that there is no essential difference between the two, there is no way that I can disabuse the person from a strongly held belief. Even disabusing a person from a weakly held belief is problematic. This is an area where individuals have to disabuse themselves… which is a loaded idea when dealing with motivated reasoning, cognitive dissonance, self-delusion, denial, psychic numbing, etc. Extremely difficult, but possible.

How do we discern logic vs irrationality from a non-authoritative source of information? Another delicate question. If I believe you are making a logical argument, I am inured against the believe that you are engaging in logical fallacy. Very problematic, imo.

I thought we already went over this. I can refer you to a website for two reasons. (a) I can tell you to go to the website because there you will find an interesting discussion. (b) I can tell you that my assertion is supported by that website so my assertion is true. In example (a) I am not referring you to it as an authoritative source, but that does not mean that I do not consider it authoritative.

Is this something you learned from somebody or something that you determined for yourself?

Gary Slabaugh

Both

Swood1000

Is it just that no skeptic blog can be credible or authoritative? Can you point to something from that blog that causes it to lose credibility or authority?

Gary Slabaugh

Blogs are usually pushing propaganda, not science. Blogs which push the denier, doubt and excessive uncertainty memes are usually not worth my time. There are enough scientific abstracts and comprehensive reports from the IPCC and other international and national scientific agencies to keep me busy

Swood1000

I disputed the blog post on the basis of deliberately confusing the scientific debate from the public debate.

You still have not defined the difference between the scientific and public debate. Please do that.

Gary Slabaugh

You don’t seem to understand science-as-epistemology IS the scientific debate. It’s part of becoming scientifically literate, in my opinion. Are you asking me to help you become scientifically literate? I’m dubious The public debate is pretty self explanatory via understanding politics and ethology.

Swood1000

So the scientific debate is: what is the effect on the environment of doubling CO₂? The public debate is: what laws should be enacted with respect to the doubling of CO₂? Is that it?

Swood1000

Groupthink:

“Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation of alternative viewpoints, by actively suppressing dissenting viewpoints, and by isolating themselves from outside influences.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink

And why would scientists be immune to groupthink?

Gary Slabaugh

Why would scientists be immune? Because science-as-epistemology critically evaluates alternative viewpoints by methodology. Groupthink is pseudo-science

Swood1000

But come now. You know very well that scientists are human and are subject to the same weaknesses as everyone else. The scientific method is a structure designed in part to remove some of these influences but it cannot do so completely. Scientists want to be respected by their peers. They want acclaim, just like everybody else. There are many benefits in being accepted by the group and non-conformity is risky. If you are saying that scientists have transcended human foibles then you are dreaming.

Gary Slabaugh

I consider modern science one of the greatest human discoveries of all time. Specifically the scientific method, the scientific model and science as an evolutionary epistemology. Perhaps this is scientism, but I also believe there are comparable and valid methodologies which complement science.

There is a post-modernist meme that neither capital T Truth nor capital K Knowledge exist. Therefore all small t truth and all small k knowledge is relative and unprovable. The only things which exists are degrees of uncertainty and doubt. I think that a belief system based in postmodernism is inherently non-logical and unwise.

If some people want to believe in such things, there’s not anything I can do about it. Nor do I want to. To each his own. I happen to believe in Truth and Knowledge and truths and what is known about what is knowable. I happen to believe in such things mostly because of science.

The men and women who commit to the discipline of science, esp the commitment to the effort of gaining credentials from accredited academies of higher learning, and work their discipline in the quest for knowledge and truths… these men and women have my trust, my respect, my loyalty, and even my love. So, as fellow human beings, with their faults and foibles, I attempt to emulate them as role models. If you want to find fault, that’s your choice.

If you think that there are better role models, a better methodology, a better model, a better epistemology… that’s your prerogative.

Swood1000

You say that the scientists have your trust, respect, loyalty and love, and that you try to emulate them. And that there are no better role models, better methodology, model, epistemology. All true.

Then you appear to acknowledge their faults and foibles as human beings but say that despite this you will not find fault.

You appear to be saying “Although scientists are subject to the same weaknesses as other human beings, I believe that those weaknesses should not be brought up or commented on, nor should any changes to methodology be proposed in order to counter them.”

Gary Slabaugh

No, I did not say I will not find fault. I think that scientists are the cream of the crop when it comes to intelligent and dedicated men and women seeking truth and knowledge. Can you think of better people? Entrepreneurs? Or do you think we are all endowed with equal gifts?

Swood1000

No, I did not say I will not find fault.

I think you did:

If you want to find fault, that’s your choice.

Gary Slabaugh

Mea culpa. I ought to have said “If you want to focus on fault instead of integrity, then that is your choice.”

Just as if you want to argue against science and where the science has the most anti-fragile and robust case for making a case for the best of our knowledge in the pursuit of truth and the marginalization of error in terms of justification and falsification.

It’s becoming increasingly and seemingly clear that your argumentation style is to focus on flaws, faults, contradictions. And that’s a choice. I look at contradiction from the point of the id which, as explained by Freud, “knows nothing of the law that forbids self-contradiction.” The secret workings of the human animal’s mind are logic-stupid and are insouciant to ethics.

Is my argumentation persuasive? influential? manipulative in a benign manner? Who will be the judge?

Gary Slabaugh

Of course the scientists themselves are not immune. It depends on being faithful and true to the scientific method, the scientific model. J Curry, Freeman Dyson, deniers with scientific credentials could be engaged in groupthink with the pseudoscientific denial industry.

It takes discernment.

Swood1000

I’m assuming it was from Marcott

No, that graph was not from Marcott. It simply shows the warm and cold periods that were absent from the Mann hockey stick. I asked you if they were also missing in the Marcott study. Are you sceptical of the warm and cold periods?

Gary Slabaugh

Then I need to put the graph in context so I can put the warm and cold periods and whether or not they are global or regional into context. In short I need to know where you got the graph and from what study and if it was peer reviewed or if it links to a peer reviewed article

Swood1000

Third, and most importantly, the scientific epistemic IS the debate.

I don’t see “epistemic” listed anywhere as a noun. Could you define it?

Gary Slabaugh

My mistake. Sometimes I use epistemic as a noun when I ought to use epistemics (functioning as singular) . So the corrected version ought to read “Third, and most importantly, the scientific epistemics IS the debate.” http://www.thefreedictionary.com/epistemics

Swood1000

J Curry is being disingenuous by deliberately confusing the scientific debate with the political one.

Could you clarify how she confuses the scientific and the public debate?

Gary Slabaugh

I need some background information first before I can thoroughly answer your question.

How do YOU understand the difference between the scientific debate and the public debate?

How do you believe a scientist with the standing and credentials of Judith Curry would understand “most of what passes for facts in the public debate
(emphasis mine) on climate change” contrasted with empirical facts as interpreted by qualified and credentialed scientists within the scientific debate?

Do you believe that you have a solid understanding of how science as an epistemology works? If you believe you have such an understanding, how would you demonstrate that knowledge apart from being a scientist yourself?

Swood1000

How do YOU understand the difference between the scientific debate and the public debate?

Frankly I don’t understand the distinction you are drawing.

Do you believe that you have a solid understanding of how science as an epistemology works?

I do not think that one needs to be an expert in a subject matter in order to be qualified to debate public policy flowing from that subject matter. For example, I don’t understand how nuclear weapons work but I am qualified to participate in the debate about their use.

Who understands the intricacies of climate models except for a handful of people? So those people are the only ones who can participate in the debate about global warming?

How does the average person decide such questions? He listens to an assortment of people who claim to be experts. He tries to evaluate their claims to expertise and the comments they make about each other. And if expert A says that X is going to happen and X does not happen, then one does not need any expertise to lose some amount of confidence in expert A.

Gary Slabaugh

If you don’t understand the distinction between science-as-epistemology as the scientific debate and the public debate over policy, I can’t help you more than I have already posted. Such a lack of discernment (apologies) infects one’s thinking with the false meme that science is political.

You can have a solid understanding without being an expert. Expertise is recognized through the process of gaining credentials. Solid understanding can come from educating yourself. A commitment to a quest for truth helps.

The intricacies of modeling can be learned also. Just start with the basics and work upwards.

“How does the average person decide such questions?” By familiarizing him/herself with the scientific mindset. Such as what are the assumptions working scientists take for granted? What are the basic rules of science that a person without credentials can also employ? How do I take a stand on say “How is science utilitarian?meaningful?truth seeking?does truth matter?how does science inform one’s ethical values?” instead of trying to be neutral. In the fight for truth, maybe neutrality is simply not an option. None of this requires expertise. Just commitment.

Swood1000

If you don’t understand the distinction between science-as-epistemology as the scientific debate and the public debate over policy, I can’t help you more than I have already posted. Such a lack of discernment (apologies) infects one’s thinking with the false meme that science is political.

I frankly have no idea what you are talking about. Please define your terms and be more down to earth.

Swood1000

In the fight for truth, maybe neutrality is simply not an option.

Can you elaborate on this? Perhaps an example?

Swood1000

Really?! I mean REALLY?!

If you have not done so, you should at least read a description of these events from the two people who went after Mann. Read the short one from McKitrick, if not the longer one from McIntyre.

Let me be quick to say that articles like these are inherently one-sided and must be taken with a grain of salt. However you may find them interesting if you have not before heard it from this side.

But the issue we were discussing was Michael Mann and whether his hockey stick was valid. Certainly anyone with the necessary statistical skill can give an informed opinion on some aspects of this, right?

Gary Slabaugh

Of course the statistics can be analyzed thoroughly. From my reading the statistics have been and Mann’s work has been vindicated in the scientific community. Mann’s work continues to be controversial for political and religious motivated reasons. Such as the following from wiki about McKitrick: “McKitrick is a signatory to the Cornwall Alliance’s Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming, which states that “Earth and its ecosystems – created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence – are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting”.

I’m not as interested in political and religious motivated reasoning as I am in scientific epistemology and epistemics. My limited understanding of human ethology is that religious and political cognitive dissonance places facts and scientific understanding below faith and ideology. Your thoughts?

Swood1000

I think that to say that somebody’s secular argument is not believable because of his religious belief is almost the definition of the ad hominem logical fallacy. If a person makes a logical argument, then evaluate the argument.

The hockey stick says that there was no Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice Age. Is that what you think?

Gary Slabaugh

Was the MWP and the LIA global or regional? I don’t know. Were they later explained in a vindication of the hockey stick? I don’t know that either. I’m under the impression that both are able to be explained as thoroughly as AGW theory is being explained. If I went do skeptical science and did some digging I might find a link. But I’m more interested in conversation today than trying to prove the truth about part of our natural history.

And I’m not sure that introducing motivated reasoning or cognitive dissonance is necessarily an ad hominem fallacy. Poking logical holes into an argument hardly invalidates the scientific method, or general theories made possible by that methodology. I’m uncertain that the statistical problems with Mann et al’s hockey stick invalidate Mann et al’s science. Most everything that I have read vindicates Mann. Of course I’m just a member of the public without credentials, perhaps engaging in confirmation bias.

That’s why I have more confidence in the science than in my own opinions. The scientific methodology and epistemology work. Uninformed opinions of the hoi polloi are generally not trustworthy. Including my own

Swood1000

And
I’m not sure that introducing motivated reasoning or cognitive dissonance is
necessarily an ad hominem fallacy.

But if somebody makes an argument that he claims is logical it is not relevant to respond by pointing to his religion. Respond by pointing out the errors in his logic.

1 + 1 = 2 regardless of the religion or motivation of the person saying it.

Gary Slabaugh

Of course a logical argument stands or falls on its own merit. The same as simple math. But we both know that (1) the scientific study of climate and (2)what to do with scientific knowledge in terms of public policy and (3)public policy decisions being complex in terms of human ethology (def: the study of human behavior and social organization from a biological perspective) and (4) (a)denial, (b) “some truths simply being too hard to face”, (c) psychic numbing in the face of an existential threat… that this algorithm is much more complex than A==A, A=/= notA and 1+1=2.

If someone is employing a non-scientific expertise (such as statistics or economics… although I’m sure there are plenty of statisticians and economists who make the pretense of being scientists… and I beg the pardon of any anonymous readers who are genuine scientific statisticians)… employing an expertise to merchandize doubt in the public debate, motivated reasoning is part of the analysis… not an ad hominem fallacy. Additionally all truth claims (whether logical or both logical and scientific) ought to be scrutinized looking at #’s 2, 3, 4 above. The scientific epistemics (1) stands on its own, just as math, and logical argumentation stand on their own merit.

Sometimes the motivated reasoning of #’s 2, 3, 4 above is to discredit #1 with whatever means possible… including scientists themselves selling their credentials. I am puzzled, it’s amystery why a scientist would be willing to sell his/her credentials… lacking the current ability to peer too long into the abyss of the human heart of darkness.

Swood1000

…employing an expertise to merchandize doubt in the public debate, motivated reasoning is part of the analysis… not an ad hominem fallacy.

What do you mean by “merchandize doubt”? If a person doubts he has a right to communicate that to others. If he does so by making false statements or irrelevant statements designed to trick or confuse, then that should be pointed out. But if a person believes that Michael Mann intentionally followed misleading and questionable procedures then explain to me why he should not relay the facts that form the basis of his opinion?

The right to free speech in the public debate also includes the right to be dishonest for entertainment news purposes. Defamation/libel is another issue altogether.

You wrote “If a person believes….” Is there is an established procedure to determine within degrees of uncertainty whether “what a person believes” is true or false? Sure, based on “the facts.” Which is circular. Empirical facts which are interpreted by holders of specialized knowledge (scientists) vs interpretation presented as pseudo-facts by holders of non-scientific opinion aka belief without evidence. Belief without evidence is pseudo-knowledge and non-factual. (You could try to make the case for doxastic modal logic, but it’s a long shot in this case.) Indeed, a really good definition of knowledge is “justified true belief” with an emphasis on justification. Nothing that followed your “If a person believes….” is justified. And your references to “the facts” are not in evidence. It’s a poor tactic to try to apologize for spreading unreasonable doubt and heightening non-scientific uncertainty. The accusation, simply based on belief, needs to be justified.

Swood1000

If you really desire a thorough knowledge of the history of merchandizing doubt in the public debate about the science (including merchandizing doubt about AGW) see this book. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M…

I read one chapter of it. It is the place to go to read a version of events slanted as much as possible to one side.

Swood1000

But if a person believes that Michael Mann intentionally followed misleading and questionable procedures then explain to me why he should not relay the facts that form the basis of his opinion?

Nothing that followed your “If a person believes….” is justified.

What are you talking about? I said that if a person believes X he should state the facts that lead him to believe this. What part if this is not justified?

Swood1000

The right to free speech in the public debate also includes the right to be dishonest for entertainment news purposes.

Any person can find the truth by demanding that assertions be supported by credible studies or expert opinions.

Swood1000

motivated reasoning is part of the analysis… not an ad hominem fallacy

This is false. Suppose a person asserts X is true. The person’s motive is relevant only if the person is asking you to take his word for it.
If the person is showing you evidence that he claims proves that X is true, then the only question is whether or not the evidence proves that X is true. If he is showing you evidence then how is his motive relevant to the truth of X?

Swood1000

And your references to “the facts” are not in evidence.

What do you mean “not in evidence”?

It’s a poor tactic to try to apologize for spreading unreasonable doubt and heightening non-scientific uncertainty. The accusation, simply based on belief, needs to be justified.

Who said anything about spreading doubt simply based on belief? I specifically said he should

“…relay the facts that form the basis of his opinion…”

Swood1000

Neither McKitrick nor McIntyre qualify

Why? Why shouldn’t they participate in any part of the debate about which they are scientifically knowledgeable?

Gary Slabaugh

Sure they can participate and do participate. It’s simply that they lack the specific scientific credentials to engage in the scientific debate. Their involvement in the public debate seems to be to muddy the waters about the science by using their statistical and economic expertise.

Swood1000

The NAS put together a panel to investigate, referred to as North et al. (2006). According to McKitrick and McIntyre, the following were some of the findings. If these in fact were the findings would it concern you?

From North et al. (2006) (p. 50, 107):

• Bristlecone records are sensitive to a variety of environmental conditions other than temperature and should be avoided for climate reconstructions.
• Mann’s results strongly depend on the bristlecone records.
• His results are therefore not robust, an important point over and above the lack of statistical significance

From North et al. (2006) p. 91:

• Reconstructions can be assessed using a variety of tests, including RE, and the CE (Coefficient of Efficiency) scores.
• If the CE score is near zero or negative your model is junk.
• Wahl and Ammann include a Table in which they use Mann’s data and code and compute the test scores that he didn’t report.
• The CE scores range from near zero to negative, which tells us that Mann’s results were junk.

From North et al. other pages:

• (p. 86-87) “McIntyre and McKitrick (2003) demonstrated that under some conditions, the leading principal component can exhibit a spurious trendlike appearance, which could then lead to a spurious trend in the proxy-based reconstruction.”
• (p. 106) “As part of their statistical methods, Mann et al. used a type of principal component analysis that tends to bias the shape of the reconstructions.” The Report even included its own graphical replication of the artificial hockey stick effect from feeding red noise into Mann’s algorithm (p. 87).
• (p. 107) The usual RE significance benchmark “is not appropriate.”
• (p. 107) “Uncertainties of the published reconstructions have been underestimated.”

Gary Slabaugh

Sure these are concerns. Were these specific concerns answered by Mann et al and by other independent statisticians?

It’s also important to consider the differences between public uncertainty, statistical uncertainty and scientific uncertainty.

Also of great importance is even math being subject to cognitive dissonance. It was cool to read the book “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahnman about how frequently even professional statisticians make basic statistical errors.

Swood1000

I have not done an intense examination of Mann. Since he has been cleared by various university panels my impression is that there was insufficient evidence of anything that would warrant academic censure. That is governed by the universities and their codes of conduct and standards of evidence.

However, it does appear to me that he intentionally used the bristlecone pine proxies knowing that without them his hockey stick would not look like a hockey stick. The scientists who published the bristlecone data (Graybill and Idso 1993) had specifically warned that the ring widths should not be used for temperature reconstruction. The NAS said:

“For periods prior to the 16th century, the Mann et al. (1999) reconstruction that uses this particular principal component analysis technique is strongly dependent on data from the Great Basin region in the western United States. Such issues of robustness need to be taken into account in estimates of statistical uncertainties.”

It appears that he used questionable proxies and methods in order to arrive at a hockey stick shape. I accept the fact that his procedures were not proven to have crossed the line academically. My impression, though, is that this was far from an objective, disinterested scientific inquiry.

Gary Slabaugh

It appears that [Mann et al] used questionable proxies and methods in order to arrive at a hockey stick shape…. My impression, though, is that this was far from an objective,
disinterested scientific inquiry. There may actually be a hockey stick
shape, but I don’t have confidence that it was reliably demonstrated in
this study.

Is questionable wrong? What is motivating your impression and what appears to you? Why the lack of confidence? Are you wanting clarification? Do you believe there are justified reasons for doubt? If so, how would you justify your reasoning for the belief in that doubt? How discerning are you about science vs pseudo-science? Why did you not get back to me about your beliefs re the scientific vs the public debate (my questions regarding Judith Curry’s blog)?

I think questioning is how science is done. Questionable proxies and methods are part of scientific inquiry. The beauty of science is that such proxies and methods can be replicated… not simply criticized to induce doubt. Indeed, critical analysis is part and parcel of scientific justification. That’s why methods and proxies have to pass peer-review muster. Additionally, if the findings by the same methods and proxies cannot be replicated or falsified, it is bogus science. If the replication process results in similar conclusions (within acceptable margins of error), it’s justified. If attempts at replication result in dissimilar findings outside the original’s margins of error, there is scientific reason for doubt; that’s the scientific method in a nutshell, no? (I’m sure I left important things out of the model.)

Questioning things for clarity vs doubt is part of the scientific debate. Questioning things in order to merchandize doubt within the public debate is a whole ‘nother kettle of fish which depends on non-scientific motivations.

Something like motivated reasoning (which affects logic, ethics, etc) requires deeper digging into assumptions, subjective biases, prejudices, confirmation bias, pattern recognition. Motivated reasoning can even effect the belief in how ideas as simple as the scientific model or mathematics are justified or lack justification. This is deep stuff, which goes into human behavior, like cognitive dissonance and self-delusion and which illusions are able to be given up for the sake of truth and which illusions cannot be surrendered.

I believe there is plenty of illusion and delusion which needs to be overcome when a self-styled skeptic, free inquirer (such as myself) is genuinely pursuing truth or whether truth seeking is a lower priority than something else. I think such an observation about myself applies to others as well.

Swood1000

Is questionable wrong?

If a scientist uses inferior methods for ulterior motives, then that is wrong.

Do you believe there are justified reasons for doubt?

If the accusations against him that I have already mentioned are true, then wouldn’t you agree that there are justified reasons for doubt?

If so, how would you justify your reasoning for the belief in that doubt?

The NAS said that his study had a problem with robustness and underestimated uncertainty. However, he had said that his findings were robust. Perhaps Michael Mann just doesn’t know what robust is but I think it is more likely that he does.

How discerning are you about science vs pseudo-science?

What kind of pseudo-science do you have in mind?

Why did you not get back to me about your beliefs re the scientific vs the public debate (my questions regarding Judith Curry’s blog)?

I will.

The beauty of science is that such proxies and methods can be replicated… not simply criticized to induce doubt.

You certainly can’t be saying that a scientist intentionally using improper procedures is exonerated if somebody using proper procedures manages to achieve the same result. Are you? The Wegman Report (E. J. Wegman, Scott & Said 2006) said

While the work of Michael Mann and colleagues presents what appears to be compelling evidence of global temperature change, the criticisms of McIntyre and McKitrick, as well as those of other authors mentioned are indeed valid.

I am baffled by the claim that the incorrect method doesn’t matter because the answer is correct anyway. Method Wrong + Answer Correct = Bad Science.

Then you said:

That’s why methods and proxies have to pass peer-review muster.

If you think that peer-review is able to provide anything more than the most cursory overview of a study you need to be disabused of that notion. It apparently took US Congressional investigators and the editors of Nature magazine and six years to pry Mann’s data and methodology from him.

Gary Slabaugh

You are assuming facts not in evidence from the following: “inferior methods for ulterior motives”

“… if accusations… are true… ” Accusations need to be judged for worthiness before either belief or doubt is justified.

From wiki, keywords: Wegman report – “Barton and U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield requested Edward Wegman to set up a team of statisticians to investigate, and they supported McIntyre and McKitrick’s view that there were statistical failings, although they did not quantify whether there was any significant effect(emphasis mine). They also produced an extensive network analysis which has been discredited by expert opinion and found to have issues of plagiarism.” Then you go about quoting from the Wegman Report. It seems to me that if you are freely inquiring, that you ought to consider criticisms of the report instead of only quoting from the report as if it’s credible source material (like J Curry’s blog). It makes it seem like you have an agenda.

Quoting from the Wegman report is a horrible example to try to discredit Mann in the public’s mind. A counter example for fairness and balance sake: “The Wegman Report (14 July, 2006) (officially the Committee on Energy and Commerce Report) was a report on the ‘hockey stick’ graph produced by a commission headed by statistician Edward Wegman. It is now remembered as the epitome of global warming denier stupidity, in terms of both its factual errors and its college freshman-level plagiarism from textbooks and Wikipedia.” http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Wegman_Report

Doubt in Mann et al’s work “validated”? I doubt the doubt, but remain freely inquiring for further clarification.

“What kinds of pseudo-science?” If science spent all it’s time debunking pseudo-science, it would have no time for it’s work. The job of debunking pseudo-science unfortunately falls onto the public, mostly. Too bad so much of the public is scientifically illiterate, but there we have it. “Numerous authors, including several scholars, say that various conservative think tanks, corporations and business groups have engaged in deliberate denial of the science of climate change since the 1990s, and some, including the National Center for Science Education, consider climate change denial to be a form of pseudoscience.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_denial

Looking forward to your specific beliefs detailing the differences between science-as-epistemology being the scientific debate and “what passes for the facts in the public debate” being the political debate.

Another example of assuming facts not in evidence: “… a scientist intentionally using improper procedures…. incorrect method…” As an online friend of mine (a trained scientist by his/her account) has said: “You can’t rationally discuss the science with someone who doesn’t use logic. With deniers all bets are off.” I’m expecting logic because neither one of us are scientists. Also it’s important to quote in context. The contextomy tactic is not honest communication. You quoting something not in evidence followed by you saying “And then you said” quoting me “That’s why methods and proxies have to pass peer-review muster” However, I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and believe it was an honest mistake.

Your prejudice against peer review is telling. It seems to imply a belief that science is guilty of “group think”. Any forthcoming conclusions on my part about your objections to (1)peer review and (2)Mann’s data and methodology needs to be put in the context of your still unprovided answers about science-as-epistemology and, more importantly, forthcoming answers to the following questions: (1) “Do you believe that you have a solid understanding of how science as an epistemology works?” (2) “If you believe you have such an understanding, how would you demonstrate that knowledge apart from being a scientist yourself?” (3) “How discerning are you about science vs
pseudo-science?”

I’m questioning your motives. I hope that is not rude or abusive of me. In a free and open and honest exchange of ideas I think it’s best to be upfront. You presented yourself as wanting to get to the root (radix, radical) of the matter of the scientific debate.

The public debate can get into quite opaque areas (motivated reason/cognitive dissonance) where one does not really “know” if the other is being truthful or not. That may be one reason why accusations of “lying” are not uncommon. This is a reply to your comment on a previous post. (I assume you know which one I’m writing about.) I think trust is earned. In order to not be bamboozled, trust is withheld until earned. How trust is earned is a delicate question. How trust is abused is less opaque, but sometimes until too late. I would like to know if you are a truth seeker or trying to justify some other realm other than truth. But how can I know if the truth is forthcoming :-/

Swood1000

The contextomy tactic is not honest communication. You quoting something not in evidence followed by you saying “And then you said” quoting me “That’s why methods and proxies have to pass peer-review muster” However, I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and believe it was an honest mistake.

You are assuming facts not in evidence from the following: “inferior methods for ulterior motives”

“… if accusations… are true… ” Accusations need to be judged for worthiness before either belief or doubt is justified.

You said:

Is questionable wrong?

And I replied that if questionable means using inferior methods for ulterior motives, then that is wrong. It does not assume anything. It simply answers your question.

Then you asked:

Do you believe there are justified reasons for doubt?

And I answered that if the accusations are true then there are justified reasons for doubt. This response was intentionally conditional. It does not assume anything but only says that it makes sense to investigate the charges. I next went about justifying my reasoning.

Can you point out to me where the following NAS statements are addressed:

• “For periods prior to the 16th century, the Mann et al. (1999) reconstruction that uses this particular principal component analysis technique is strongly dependent on data from the Great Basin region in the western United States. Such issues of robustness need to be taken into account in estimates of statistical uncertainties.”

• “McIntyre and McKitrick (2003) demonstrated that under some conditions, the leading principal component can exhibit a spurious trendlike appearance, which could then lead to a spurious trend in the proxy-based reconstruction.”

• “As part of their statistical methods, Mann et al. used a type of principal component analysis that tends to bias the shape of the reconstructions.” The Report even included its own graphical replication of the artificial hockey stick effect from feeding red noise into Mann’s algorithm (p. 87).

• The usual RE significance benchmark “is not appropriate.”

• “Uncertainties of the published reconstructions have been underestimated.”

Swood1000

Quoting from the Wegman report is a horrible example to try to discredit Mann in the public’s mind.

At the House Committee hearings (House Energy and Commerce Committee 2005b), NAS Panel chairman Gerald North and panelist Peter Bloomfield were specifically asked whether they disagreed with the severe criticisms of the Wegman Report.

CHAIRMAN BARTON. Dr. North, do you dispute the conclusions or the methodology of Dr. Wegman’s report?

DR. NORTH. No, we don’t. We don’t disagree with their criticism. In fact, pretty much the same thing is said in our report.

DR. BLOOMFIELD. Our committee reviewed the methodology used by Dr. Mann and his coworkers and we felt that some of the choices they made were inappropriate. We had much the same misgivings about his work that was documented at much greater length by Dr. Wegman.

WALLACE: “the two reports were complementary, and to the extent that they overlapped, the conclusions were quite consistent.” (Am Stat Assoc.)

Can you tell me exactly what part of my statement about peer review shows that I object to it or am prejudiced against it? And what part of my statement do you disagree with? Peer review does not involve intense scrutiny of the methods and procedures used. The peer reviewer does an overview, not an investigation.

British Medical Journal editor Fiona Godlee and colleagues took a paper about to be published in the journal and introduced nine major and five minor deliberate methodological errors. The doctored paper was then sent to 420 peer reviewers. The team discovered that the median number of errors detected by the respondents was a mere two. No one managed to spot more than five deliberate errors and 16% of responders couldn’t find any mistakes at all. Bad news for peer review: this trial suggested that the process doesn’t really increase the quality of published research. Even the authors concluded: “The study paints a rather bleak picture of the effectiveness of peer review.” http://www.labnews.co.uk/features/peer-review/

Swood1000

I’m questioning your motives.

What motives do you think I could have? And why do motives matter anyway? If I say that the emperor has no clothes what difference does it make what my motive is? The question to be addressed is: does the emperor have clothes?

Swood1000

The public debate can get into quite opaque areas (motivated reason/cognitive dissonance) where one does not really “know” if the other is being truthful or not. That may be one reason why accusations of “lying” are not uncommon.

No, one always knows whether the other side is being truthful. If you assert X then I ask to be shown a study or an expert opinion to that effect. If you can supply one then you cannot be charged with lying. If you cannot supply one then I simply tell you that I need to be shown some evidence before I’ll accept X. There is no place for a charge of lying because an unsupported assertion simply carries no weight.

The only place for the charge of lying is where a person misrepresents what a study or expert said, in the hope that the other person won’t himself read the source document.

Swood1000

“It is now remembered as the epitome of global warming denier stupidity…”

Do you really think that this came from the pen of a person lacking an agenda? How could you post such a quotation and expect it to be accepted as authoritative?

Swood1000

Doubt in Mann et al’s work “validated”? I doubt the doubt, but remain freely inquiring for further clarification.

What does this refer to?

Swood1000

Wikipedia says:

“Pseudoscience is a claim, belief or practice which is presented as scientific, but does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status.”

Can you supply a link to a study or a quotation from one of the major skeptic scientists that demonstrates pseudoscience?

Swood1000

Another example of assuming facts not in evidence: “… a scientist intentionally using improper procedures…. incorrect method…” As an online friend of mine (a trained scientist by his/her account) has said: “You can’t rationally discuss the science with someone who doesn’t use logic. With deniers all bets are off.” I’m expecting logic because neither one of us are scientists.

Are you saying that I am not being logical? I say that if a scientist uses inferior methods for ulterior motives then that is wrong, and you say that this is not logical?

Gary Slabaugh

You accusing “…a scientist uses inferior methods for ulterior motives…” (1) assumes facts not in evidence which is not logical. (2)An accusation is only as good as the argument which justifies it. I have not seen any justification for the argument. Just a rehashing of the accusation. That’s not logical either. (3) There is no proof of wrong doing, only a hypothetical. Use logic to attempt to prove wrongdoing, which I assume you are attempting. Otherwise it’s simply uniformed opinion.

Swood1000

Consider this statement:

If a scientist uses inferior methods for ulterior motives then that is wrong.

Does that statement accuse someone? No, it states the rule by which he people are judged.

Does that statement assume any fact? No. It says that in the case of certain facts, then a certain conclusion.

I think you need to more carefully read what I write. I did later on assert some facts (those asserted in the NAS report) but I did not do so here.

Gary Slabaugh

The “If” proposition is accusatory. The “then” conclusion is conditional. “In case of certain facts” is also conditional. I’m reading the entire rule or statement in context of the hockey stick controversy, being aware that context, even with a hypothetical, is important. Are you not making the rule or statement in context of the hockey stick controversy? or are you arguing a hypothetical?

As I posted earlier see the Caspar Ammann article by searching keywords “Robustness Mann Reconstruction”.

This is beating a dead horse. Again, can we move onto something more interesting?

Swood1000

This is beating a dead horse. Again, can we move onto something more interesting?

Right but the accusation is that these were not errors and that he knew better.

Gary Slabaugh

Then prove the accusation justified using logic. It’s extremely challenging proving such types of accusations because you are getting into motives, i.e. that these were not honest mistakes & “… that he knew better.” It’s like me accusing you of being a denier in the guise of being a skeptic (which I am not… just using it as an example in the public debate). How can I justify that you know better than to behave as a skeptic rather than a denier? I can’t read your mind or plumb the depths of your heart.

Accusations are cheap. Proving logically that the accusation is justified is labor intensive. That’s why it’s easier to accuse, but not put in the hard work of logical argumentation

Swood1000

Then prove the accusation justified using logic.

More than once I quoted from the NAS report. I also told you that the NAS report said his findings lacked robustness and that maybe Mann didn’t know what constituted robustness but I think he did. I can’t prove the truth of the statements made in the NAS report. I can only tell you what the were and that they seem believable to me.

Gary Slabaugh

So you admit that you are engaging in mind reading. That’s OK, just not robust

I also told you that the NAS report said his findings lacked robustness and that maybe Mann didn’t know what constituted robustness but I think he did.

So you admit that you are engaging in mind reading. That’s OK, just not robust

By the same logic if I tell you that I believe that a scientist is competent and that he intends the result of his actions you would label that as “mind reading.” Is that correct?

Gary Slabaugh

I would say that trying to prove motivation with insufficient evidence is mind reading.

Swood1000

The NAS report said that Mann’s findings lacked robustness. There are only two possibilities: (a) he didn’t know they lacked robustness, which makes him incompetent. (b) he did know they lacked robustness, in which case that is what he intended. I am not concerned about motive, only intent.

Gary Slabaugh

From previous posts you have already judged his intent. On what grounds?

Swood1000

Intent refers to what a person intended to do. Motive refers to why he intended to do it. We are not talking about motive. If Mann’s findings lacked robustness then either he intended that or he did not. If he did not then he is incompetent. If he did, then one is left wondering about his motive.

Gary Slabaugh

One must wonder why Mann et al were targeted not only for the computer hacking, but also for the purpose (the intent) of calling their work into serious doubt. /sarcasm The ulterior economic motive of the merchants of doubt, denial and excessive uncertainty (above and beyond genuine scientific uncertainty) certainly is not to be scrutinized for intent.

Swood1000

The ulterior economic motive of the merchants of doubt, denial and excessive uncertainty (above and beyond genuine scientific uncertainty) certainly is not to be scrutinized for intent.

Scrutinized for intent, no. We know their intent (to spread doubt, denial and uncertainty). As for motive, we don’t really care what their motive is – only whether their facts are correct.

Gary Slabaugh

Remember not to take sentences out of context. I prefaced that sentence of an intent to use sarcasm. The truth of the matter is the meta-goal of spreading doubt, denial, unscientific uncertainty. That meta-goal can be discerned and intent judged… even if motive lies in the secret workings of the mind og the human animal.

Again you bring up facts which returns us to the scientific debate among those who have the disciplined and specialized knowledge to examine the evidence, the facts, the data, the phenomena vs the generally scientifically illiterate public debate among those who are not particularly well-equipped to judge/discern “whether their facts are correct.”

For me it comes back to looking for credentials and who has credibility to make a well reasoned argument from the evidence: “Proof is sufficient evidence or an argument for the truth of a proposition.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_(truth)

Even though science is not engaged in “proving things to a certainty or a 100% probability of truth” science is very much engaged in the justification and falsification of theories… theories built upon the professional examination of natural phenomena, i.e. evidence.

So again I focus in on the meta-goal of the political and economic and religious ideologues and their followers who have a vested interest in their intention to spread a mistrust in the scientific model.

Swood1000

If one has a knowledge of statistics then why isn’t he qualified to debate the statistical aspects of a study?

Their involvement in the public debate seems to be to muddy the waters about the science…

Are you saying that anyone who argues from the skeptical point of view is by definition muddying the water?

As the article concludes (and I concur) “Can we all get on to something more interesting now?”

Swood1000

What do you regard as more interesting?

Gary Slabaugh

The Mann v Steyn lawsuit

Swood1000

I’m up for that. What are your thoughts?

Gary Slabaugh

It will make little difference. If Mann wins the lawsuit, it will be ignored by the merchants of doubt and by the purveyors of excessive uncertainty. They will just move along with the next news cycle.

If Mann loses the suit it will be touted by these same merchants and sellers as a great victory for their side and proof/vindication that Mann et al were wrong all along.

Swood1000

I think that Mann was crazy to file a libel lawsuit. It just guaranteed that these comments about him would remain front and center for the foreseeable future, and they have become worse. All the civil liberties organizations seem to have taken the opposite side and are filing legal briefs against him. And it appears that he as done the same thing to Judith Curry. See: Free Speech for Mann, But Not for Thee

Gary Slabaugh

Steyn acting as his own attorney ought to be a circus. I wonder if it’s just a stunt.

CB

lol! Are you serious? Everything Mark Steyn does is a stunt. He’s a professional stunt clown.

Gary Slabaugh

You would know these particulars much more than me. Thanks for the “lol”

Steyn really does have a pretty good wit, but it’s possible that this can only be appreciated by those who have sympathy for his point of view.

Gary Slabaugh

Does pity for Steyn’s point of view count toward him gaining some sympathy?

Swood1000

Also, Steyn can now say whatever he wants in his legal filings and it is privileged – Mann can’t sue him for anything he says there, and it gets picked up and reported by the press.

I guess the ultimate question is whether the word “fraudulent” necessarily means actual legal fraud and falsehood or whether it is understood to express an opinion that his findings are invalid. If the former, it looks like Mann might have a good case.

Like I said above, I doubt that it will make any significant difference to the merchants of doubt and the purveyors of denial and to the sellers of excessive uncertainty above and beyond the scientific uncertainty acceptable to the bona fide professionals… the scientists who have remained faithful and true to their credentials.

The genuine seeker, the free inquirer accepts scientific uncertainty. The doubter or the believer may also, but it seems like s/he has already made up her/his mind on the matter. Getting into doubt vs inquiry in going deep down the rabbit hole. Whether one engages in logical fallacy, doubt/faith confirmed by bias, cognitive dissonance, self delusion, denial… it’s challenging to the extreme to see it in oneself. Even when it’s pointed out by others, it’s most often rejected. Welcome to the molten pit of human reality.

Swood1000

Sure, let’s get on to something more interesting.

However, with respect to statistics, I didn’t see this NAS point addressed (saying that Mann’s reconstruction was no better than the mean):

“Reconstructions that have poor validation statistics (i.e., low CE) will have correspondingly wide uncertainty bounds, and so can be seen to be unreliable in an objective way. Moreover, a CE statistic close to zero or negative suggests that the reconstruction is no better than the mean, and so its skill for time averages shorter than the validation period will be low. Some recent results reported in Table 1S of Wahl and Ammann (in press) indicate that their reconstruction, which uses the same procedure and full set of proxies used by Mann et al. (1999), gives CE values ranging from 0.103 to –0.215, depending on how far back in time the reconstruction is carried.”

Gary Slabaugh

What’s your point? Are you arguing that Mann et al’s reconstruction being no better than the mean proves incompetence, ulterior motives, a non-robust methodology?

Swood1000

Being “no better than the mean” means that Mann’s reconstruction was no more informative than the simple mean of the data; i.e., no statistical significance. The prediction value is low and the uncertainties are high. As the NAS report put it:

“Regarding metrics used in the validation step in the reconstruction exercise, two issues have been raised (McIntyre and McKitrick 2003, 2005a,b). One is that the choice of “significance level” for the reduction of error (RE) validation statistic is not appropriate. The other is that different statistics, specifically the coefficient of efficiency (CE) and the squared correlation (r2), should have been used (the various validation statistics are discussed in Chapter 9). Some of these criticisms are more relevant than others, but taken together, they are an important aspect of a more general finding of this committee, which is that uncertainties of the published reconstructions have been underestimated.” NAS Report page 50

The bristlecone pine proxies should not have been included. Without them there is no hockey stick and verification scores are clearly insignificant. With them the graph shape depends on faulty data and the verification scores are still insignificant.

“The possibility that increasing tree ring widths in modern times might be driven by increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations, rather than increasing temperatures, was first proposed by LaMarche et al. (1984) for bristlecone pines (Pinus longaeva) in the White Mountains of California. In old age, these trees can assume a “stripbark” form, characterized by a band of trunk that remains alive and continues to grow after the rest of the stem has died. Such trees are sensitive to higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations (Graybill and Idso 1993), possibly because of greater water-use efficiency (Knapp et al. 2001, Bunn et al. 2003) or different carbon partitioning among tree parts (Tang et al. 1999). …”strip-bark’ samples should be avoided for temperature reconstructions…” NAS Report page 50

Why link to a blog (a propaganda site) when the Wahl & Ammann report was already available? Did the NAS report judge intent? Maybe you, like the author of the blog, didn’t like the findings of Wahl & Ammann. Did their findings lack robustness too?

Swood1000

Why link to a blog (a propaganda site)…

The blog just lists all the arguments that have been made against Wahl & Ammann. If you would prefer, I could rephrase and list them here.

Gary Slabaugh

No, I don’t need your paraphrasing. What I would prefer is a scholarly rebuttal by the professionals. You already referenced an oil industry consultant and an economist as giving a scholarly rebuttal to Mann, Bradley, & Hughes… which was then turned into a political circus as detailed by the Wikipedia article on the Wegmen report. Mann et al’s robustness was corroborated by Wahl & Ammann. So if McIntyre & McKitrick are essentially correct and Mann, Bradley, Hughes, Wahl, and Ammann are essentially incorrect… I will need to be linked to scholarly articles, not propaganda or political sites, for clarification. Clear enough?

I’m simply not interested in propaganda sites and the elements of the political debate whose primary motive and intent is to discredit the science. If the science is wrong, the science will correct it. That’s science. Not the politicians, not the economists, not the oil industry. Does that make sense?

Swood1000

I’m simply not interested in…sites…whose primary motive and intent is to discredit the science. …Does that make sense?

Yes

Gary Slabaugh

No, I’m saying that merchandizing doubt and manufacturing uncertainty for sometimes opaque and sometimes obvious motivated reasons is NOT being skeptical and is deliberately muddying the water.

Can statistics be used malevolently?

Swood1000

Willie Soon’s opinion is bought and paid for by fossil fuel interests.

Is every scientist’s opinion bought and paid for by the interests of those who provide his funding?

SkyHunter

No, but you can trace every prominent one in the media back to industry think tanks and PR organizations.

Swood1000

How do we know that X’s opinion is bought and paid for and that Y’s opinion is not?

SkyHunter

It is a moot point. A bought and paid for opinion could still be a robust opinion. To the scientifically literate though, it is easy to spot an invalid opinion.

Like for instance; “Natural variability means it will take 150 years to statistically prove AGW.”

That is nonsense to anyone with more than a casual understanding of statistics. So that person’s opinion is obviously not well grounded in reality. When you couple that with speaking fees and other promotions from the fossil fuel funded PR industry, and it becomes clear that the person is trading their credibility for money.

Swood1000

Like for instance; “Natural variability means it will take 150 years to statistically prove AGW.”

Dr. Collins believes that a burdensome case against AGW can be made after only 20 years.

SkyHunter

Are you referring to William Collins at Berkeley?

When did he say a burdensome case could be made against AGW in 20 years?

“Now, I am hedging a bet because, to be honest with you, if the hiatus is still going on as of the sixth IPCC report, that report is going to have a large burden on its shoulders walking in the door, because recent literature has shown that the chances of having a hiatus of 20 years are vanishingly small.”

The even more recent literature however suggests that the recent climate, which provides the empirical observations, was still in a somewhat unforced state, still overcoming the inertia. As the system becomes more energetic, it is likely to exhibit unpredictable behavior.

The hedges Dr. Collins made were, (1) statistically the odds favor a less than 20 year hiatus (1999 – 2018), (2) It is already an area of intense interest, so the burden of explanation would be carried by the published research.

Swood1000

When did he say a burdensome case could be made against AGW in 20 years?

Yes, he said that in this quote. And your view is either (a) that more recent literature has satisfied the burden, or (b) that you disagree that it should be considered a burden, or (c) that you consider the burden to be slight.

SkyHunter

I don’t believe the hiatus will last that long, but if it does (a) it will not be outside of probability and (b) it will be explained by observations.

SkyHunter

One thing that I would like to point out.

Research grants are not the same as speaking fees and other public relations fees. That is the major difference between actively researching scientists and the public relations personas like Curry and Pielke Jr.

What they are doing is public relations propaganda, not science.

Swood1000

But if a scientist suddenly finds himself offered large sums to speak are you saying that the refusal to turn that down proves that his motives are not honorable?

I heard Richard Lindzen say once that he does public speaking in part because he enjoys it, and enjoys the give and take of it. And I am sure he also enjoys the money, and what’s wrong with that?

SkyHunter

Nothing. But scientists like Lindzen are working for money, not science. Lindzen also helped attack the science showing a link between lung cancer and cigarette smoking.

My understanding is that Lindzen was attacking the connection between secondhand smoke and lung cancer. Can you refer me to any statement in which he questioned the connection between lung cancer and the person smoking?

But scientists like Lindzen are working for money, not science.

And we know that how?

SkyHunter

You are right, he didn’t join the PR industry until after the industry lost the fight to deny a link between smoking and lung cancer.

Swood1000

The American Physical Society invited Christy, Curry and Lindzen to participate in their Climate Change Statement Review Workshop. If these are really just corrupt hacks, as you insist, then how could the APS be fooled so badly?

There could be no question that they wanted no repetition of the resignations that happened after their last statement, such as this one from Harold Lewis, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara:

“It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist.”

But how do you explain that they were willing to sully the name of their august organization with the likes of these people? Is it possible that they are not actually held in low esteem by their peers?

SkyHunter

The APS society invited them because they are the most prestigious skeptics available, and they wanted as full a perspective as possible.

They don’t care about individual members throwing hissy fits like Lewis. Including three high profile deniers with actual scientific credentials does not tarnish their image, it enhances it. When they basically leave their AGW position statement unchanged, no one can say they ignored the skeptics in their deliberations.

Swood1000

Yes but you say that denying AGW is like denying gravity, and is a symptom of mental imbalance. The APS must not agree because they certainly would not invite in experts to provide the viewpoint that gravity does not exist.

SkyHunter

If you listen very carefully to what they say professionally, they don’t deny AGW. They reserve that for their blogs and op-eds in the Wall Street Journal.

The give the APS review process credibility with the deniersphere, even though they used quotes from the workshop to make specious arguments.

Gary Slabaugh

You have the patience of Job to explain a host of questions so thoroughly. Cudos

SkyHunter

It isn’t patience. It is contentment. I am content to teach and learn. You don’t really understand something until you can explain it to someone. Explaining is a very important step in the learning process.

Gary Slabaugh

Truth. Thanks for the clarification. I’m glad that the teaching and the learning contribute to your joie de vivre.

Swood1000

If you listen very carefully to what they say professionally, they don’t deny AGW.

This is where we run into the distinction between AGW and CAGW. Lindzen agrees with AGW but says that it is nothing to worry about and may actually be beneficial. He denies CAGW, which is what the issue is about.

give the APS review process credibility with the deniersphere,

Why do they need credibility with the deniersphere? This is a premier scientific organization. Are you saying that they are bringing in people they know to be hucksters to advise them on their policy statement? I don’t see them bringing in people who think that the earth was created 6000 years ago to advise them on geological issues even though there appears to be a substantial and vocal group of people out there of that persuasion.

SkyHunter

Lindzen has always had a contrary opinion on a multitude of issues and propagated that opinion loudly. But like much of his research, his opinions have been consistently in error.

Including the most prominent skeptics is just good science. The more rigorous the challenge, the more robust the conclusion. You are making a false equivalency. The flat-earth society and the creationists are not members of the APS. Nor are their any policy issues at stake over whether or not the earth is 6000 years old. The APS I don’t believe has a position statement on creation vs evolution, but if the do, I am sure they would have included creationists in the review process.

How could one conduct a thorough review with reviewing all the elements?

When AGW became a POLIcy issue. It automatically became a POLItical issue. The APS is not immune from political fallout. By having three credentialed figures who are prominent in the deniersphere as part of the review process will also help to diffuse some of the inevitable political blowback when the APS position statement remains relatively unchanged.

Politics and policy are inseparable. Once in order to understand the politics, you need to understand the policy goals of the vested interests.

If one or two members of the World’s second largest organization of physicists resign over that… I think the other 50,000 members will get over it.

Thanks Paul, I guess, never any fun dealing with Roger Jr. I can’t figure him out, except that one consistent pattern emerges-he is a self-aggrandizer who sets up straw men, knocks them down, and takes credit for being the honest broker to explain the mess-and in fact usually adds little new social science to his analysis. I saw him do it at AAAS four years ago and called him on it afterward and he walked off steamed when I told him he just made assertions and that good scientists show empirical evidence. He is not worth arguing about, frankly.

“On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.”

SkyHunter

What do you take away from that?

I see him quite clearly laying out that when politics and science collide, science must be communicated in a nonscientific manner, because you need broad support to effect policy.

While he is concerned about the balance between communicating effectively and remaining honest, RPJR, as a political scientist, is only interested in being effective, he has no regard for the truth.

Swood1000

I prefer the news on one page and the editorials on another. On the news page I just want the facts, without modification or embellishment. Certainly opinions can be stated as news. “Dr. X said that in his opinion…” but it must be presented as an opinion.

If a scientist, in an attempt to influence public policy, communicates a skewed version of the facts or findings, how can the result be anything other than a loss of credibility for himself and for scientists in general?

When Schneider says “make little mention of any doubts we might have” he is saying that a scientist is justified in delivering, as fact, only the part of the facts that he believes will cause the reader to have the same opinion as he himself has. He is talking about editorializing the news page.

At the bottom, Schneider thinks that scientists should control public policy. Inconveniently, the voters control public policy, so Schneider feels justified in making the public policy decision but in a stealth way.

It is a cornerstone of our society that the average person is competent to sit in a jury and listen to competing arguments and make a decision. Usually it is enough, in a technical case, to be shown the opinion of highly-regarded experts. But let’s have the decision be made on that basis rather than by limiting the information to be given to the jury.

SkyHunter

That is a very naive perspective of how the court of public opinion works. That is not even how a jury trial works. There are rules of disclosure for evidence, and even certain lines of argument that are not allowed to proceed.

RPJR and Lindzen both decry that climate science as corrupted by politics. And rightfully so, since they are the ones corrupting science with politics. Then they claim victimhood when called out on it.

The average person lacks the scientific background to even understand the arguments, let alone decide which is likely correct.

Swood1000

There are rules of disclosure of evidence, and even lines of argument that are allowed to proceed.

The purpose of the rules of evidence is to keep irrelevant evidence from being introduced in an attempt to get the jury to make a decision for reasons that are not relevant. It is well known that a person can be influenced by inflaming his passions, for example, or by confusing him with a fallacious argument. The role of the judge is to prevent lawyers from using these methods. But there are no rules of evidence that prohibit the introduction of relevant facts that don’t also involve compromising the fact-finding process.

The average person lacks the scientific background to even understand the arguments, let alone decide which is likely correct.

Well, does the average person understand the economic and military questions that are at stake in the election of a president or member of congress? Not even slightly. So how do we choose these people?

As far a public policy scientific questions are concerned, my position is that it is not necessary for people to understand the low-level scientific details. I can support funding for a Center for Disease Control without knowing the first thing about disease. There are people who do know about disease. Let me hear from them about what the risks are, what the costs will be, and what is the likely outcome if we do nothing and if we do something. If there are two experts who disagree let me hear them debate each other. What is your alternative?

SkyHunter

Scientific arguments are very technical and the details are incredibly boring for 99.99% of people.

If you don’t know any better, and I explain to you the scientific fact that all the energy emitted from the surface of the earth that can be absorbed by CO2 is absorbed in the first 10 meters of the atmosphere, so therefore it is impossible for CO2 to raise the temperature at the surface, because the bandwidth it is active in is already saturated, what are you Joe Public supposed to think?

Swood1000

In the first place, Joe Public doesn’t need to be told any of those details.

Suppose you’re told that the county engineer recommends a tax increase to pay for upgrades to the sewer system. And let’s suppose you know nothing about how a public sewer system works. You don’t want to know the details. You just want to know why he is recommending this. How serious is the problem he foresees? How likely is it? How expensive is his solution? Will his solution actually solve the problem he is worried about? Do other experts in this area agree? If not, you want to hear their reasons for disagreeing and his responses.

How else should this situation be handled?Just because a person has technical expertise doesn’t mean that he is more competent to make public policy decisions.

SkyHunter

How is it possible for CO2 to warm the atmosphere if the bandwidth is already saturated in less that 30 feet?

Swood1000

If that is true, and if it is dispositive of the issue, then you will not be faced with any opposition that you could not brush aside easily. Standing on your side of the stage would be a dazzling array of scientists with impeccable credentials and on the other side of the stage would be a rag-tag group whose opinions you could impeach easily. What’s the problem?

SkyHunter

It is true. All of the energy emitted from the surface that can be absorbed by CO2 is absorbed in the first 10 meters. This is a scientific fact.

How can adding more CO2 possibly make any difference?

Swood1000

How can adding more CO2 possibly make any difference?

I thought we were talking about whether Joe Public has a role in formulating public policy in an area dominated by technical details. You seem to be saying that, just as a judge will not permit a jury to reach an illogical conclusion neither should Joe Public be presented with a choice where one of the options is impossible or illogical. I agree with that. I do not agree, however, that global warming public policy must be decided by climate scientists just because they are the only ones who understand the underlying science.

My impression is that you would prefer to decide global warming public policy at a high level by experts, thinking of it as analogous to just solving math equations that could not logically be solved any other way. You would prefer a powerful central authority to establish the “correct” public policy. This authority would severely rein in free enterprise and capitalism, and would impose heavy taxes where necessary to force individuals and companies into certain behaviors deemed necessary. And you would prefer that this be done with little or no input from Joe Public, because you don’t trust Joe Public to understand what is in his best interests.

But I believe that Joe Public is competent to hear the arguments made by both sides and to correctly decide public policy questions. I have a greater fear of those who would try to exclude Joe Public on the grounds that they know what is good for Joe Public better than he does.

SkyHunter

Can you answer the question?

If all the energy emitted from the surface that can be absorbed is absorbed in the first 30 feet, how can adding more make a difference?

Answer the question, then we will discuss policy decisions.

Swood1000

I see. You are saying that only those people who can answer this question are competent to have a voice in the formulation of global warming public policy.

But that is ridiculous. The experts are experts on the probability and the magnitude of the harm that will come about if we don’t change our GHG policies. But the experts are not unanimous about the probability and magnitude. And they are not experts on the costs. Who is to evaluate whether a proposed solution to a proposed problem is equal to the proposed cost?

Furthermore, scientists, even when they agree strongly with each, can be wrong. The mainstream climate scientists agreed strongly that there would not be a hiatus but there was one. It is not unreasonable for Joe Public to want to wait and see if these predictions are likely to be valid, given the extreme cost.

Swood1000

If there is more CO2, the energy is absorbed closer to the source.

SkyHunter

Yes, but it is an infinitesimal difference and cannot account for observations. AGW must be a scientific hoax.

Swood1000

Few people claim that AGW is a hoax. It’s CAGW that they’re talking about.

SkyHunter

CAGW is a denier meme. The latest evolution of denial.

Besides,I just provided with proof AGW is fake.

Swood1000

Frankly, I don’t really follow your point. Could you make it in a more simplified way?

SkyHunter

Since all the energy that can be absorbed by CO2 is absorbed in the first ten meters, and Knut Angstrom proved in 1901 that the CO2 bandwidth was saturated, therefore AGW is a hoax.

The point is, the general public is not scientifically literate enough to defend themselves against disinformation.

You had to turn to Michael Mann’s blog to find the answer. That should tell you something.

Swood1000

I like that blog. Good explanations of stuff. And I especially like Gavin’s responses. Why do you think that Joe Public won’t turn to that blog for his information?

the general public is not scientifically literate enough to defend themselves against disinformation

Wrong! Within 5 minutes I was reading about Miskolczi and then from Roy Spencer’s blog and Judith Curry’s blog how it was all crap. I don’t need to understand the underlying science. I just need to (a) find somebody who does understand it and can explain it to me, and (b) evaluate that person’s bias, expertise, and believability. For purposes of (b) my approach is to see what critics that person has and what they say.

What’s wrong with that approach? What is the alternative?

Swood1000

Furthermore, if a scientist says that X will happen and X doesn’t happen Joe Public doesn’t need to understand the details of X in order to justifiably lose confidence in that scientist.

SkyHunter

So when Judith Curry says things like:

Ideas linking changes in the polar vortex to global warming are not supported by any evidence that I find convincing.

The argument evolves, but the goal remains the same. Do nothing so Exxon Mobil can keep making money.

Swood1000

an obvious lie

So the lie is that in fact it is supported by evidence that she finds convincing?

Or when she keeps misrepresenting the IPCC probability distribution.

“Misrepresent” of course refers again to a lie. So are you saying that this is not a difference of opinion but that she knows what the truth and is intentionally telling a lie?

SkyHunter

The very physics that creates the polar vortex is the evidence for it’s weakening from global warming.

She is manufacturing doubt where none exists. Deliberately, on purpose, for money.

Swood1000

She is manufacturing doubt where none exists. Deliberately, on purpose, for money.

Is this guy doing the same thing? It appears that you believe that sceptics fall into one of only two categories: misled as a result of scientific illiteracy or intentionally dishonest. Is there any other possibility?

Happer’s argument is a strawman. Of course polar vortices have been around forever. They are caused by differential in atmospheric height and corrialis effect.

Do you see how scientific literacy allows me see through his BS?

Climatedepot is a propaganda outlet, not a scientific resource.

Swood1000

So, since Dr. William Happer does not lack scientific literacy the only other option is moral degeneracy?

SkyHunter

Why should you assume either/or?

Swood1000

That’s the question I am asking. What are the other options? (But I will agree that a person can be scientifically illiterate and morally degenerate at the same time, if that is your point.)

SkyHunter

The world is not black and white. Happer could very well believe what he says, and be scientifically literate. Scientists are not immune to confirmation bias, Happer got his degree in 1964. He is admittedly out of his field, and has no published climate research.

Scientific literacy helps one dispel BS from the outside, but the BS we tell ourselves is like a super virus. It takes extra effort to expose the deception we perpetrate upon ourselves!

Swood1000

The point is, the general public is not scientifically literate enough to defend themselves against disinformation.

Would you be kind enough to lay out your proposed solution?

SkyHunter

Scientific literacy.

Swood1000

Can you spell it out? Many members of congress do not have scientific literacy so they will be excluded from participation in the formulation of global warming public policy?

SkyHunter

That is what we elect Congress for is to establish policies governed by laws. Otherwise there is no stability.

When I answered scientific literacy to your question, I was addressing how to not be susceptible to rhetorical bullshit.

Swood1000

So you are not saying that those without scientific literacy should be excluded from participation in the formulation of global warming public policy?

SkyHunter

I find it quite ironic that the first AGW denier was a Koch.

Knut Ångström, asked an assistant, Herr J. Koch, to do a simple experiment. He sent infrared radiation through a tube filled with carbon dioxide, containing somewhat less gas in total then would be found in a column of air reaching to the top of the atmosphere. That’s not much, since the concentration in air is only a few hundred parts per million. Herr Koch did his experiments in a 30cm long tube, though 250cm would have been closer to the right length to use to represent the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Herr Koch reported that when he cut the amount of gas in the tube by one-third, the amount of radiation that got through scarcely changed. The American meteorological community was alerted to Ångström’s result in a commentary appearing in the June, 1901 issue of Monthly Weather Review, which used the result to caution “geologists” against adhering to Arrhenius’ wild ideas. – See more at: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/a-saturated-gassy-argument#sthash.VyDqTI31.dpuf

Swood1000

Do you think that capitalism is a defective system that needs to be replaced?

SkyHunter

All institutions must grow or become obsolete.

Swood1000

And how should capitalism grow?

SkyHunter

Greed (profit motive) is a great motivator, but it can only take a society so far.

Swood1000

Why can it only take a society so far? Certainly society must put limits on activities that are harmful to society but the capitalist system has been responsible for the incredible rise in the standard of living in the world. Yes, it has also been responsible for negative things such as pollution but why throw out the baby with the bathwater? I know there are those who believe there is no baby, that all human activity is ultimately harmful, and from that point of view a system that provided a less potent reward for innovation would be preferable, but I think they are wrong-headed.

SkyHunter

Who is suggesting we discard the capitalist system?

Certainly not I. I would start with modest reforms, such as a living wage, and limits to the political influence capital wields in our society.

I am certainly not suggesting we muzzle their think tanks and propaganda websites, just that we educate our members enough that capital lies are seen for what they are.

Swood1000

limits to the political influence capital wields in our society

What limits would you put in place?

SkyHunter

I would begin with the reversing the idea that corporations are people, and public financing of all campaigns and making it illegal for lobbyists to do favors in exchange for influence.

Swood1000

I would begin with the reversing the idea that corporations are people

I assume you are talking about for the purposes of the First Amendment freedom of speech. Is that right? And unions too, right? But the person who operates his business as a sole proprietorship, instead of as a corporation, would still be considered a person for this purpose?

SkyHunter

Money is not speech. I don’t care what the Supreme Court says. Money is not speech.

Swood1000

Money is not speech.

So a law could be passed saying that no money can be spent to advocate any political issue. You can speak all you want but, for example, you may not drive anywhere to protest because that involves an expense and that is illegal.

SkyHunter

I suppose it could, depends on how absurd lawmakers want to get.

Capital already has outsized influence on the political system. having laws regulating political spending is no different than having laws to regulate traffic.

Swood1000

Or, if restrictions on spending money are not restrictions on speech, the government could restrict spending money only on certain political issues. For example, the party in power could restrict spending money to support their political opponents.

Yes it is. If a job is not worth a living wage, it is not worth doing. If someone is profiting from the labor of another, their profit should come only after the worker has earned a living wage. Anything else is the equivalent of slavery.

There is no good reason for not paying a living wage, period. The only reason is for capital to profit from labor.

Swood1000

Real income would decrease, on net, by $17 billion for families whose income would otherwise have been six times the poverty threshold or more, lowering their average family income by 0.4 percent.

There are those who say that those who are paid minimum wage are typically teenagers, and that the wage increase is paid in part by shifting income from those being paid more. They argue that these entry level jobs really just serve the function of getting people into the job market and that the people who are actually supporting a family need it more. That entry-level jobs should not be seen as a career choice – people should have their sights set on the higher level jobs.

Also the argument is made that minimum wage works against the minimally educated, low-skilled people because at $7.25 an hour they only have to compete against others who can earn $7.25 an hour. If you increase it to $10.10 an hour they have to compete against those who were earning $10.10 an hour and they won’t be able to do it.

SkyHunter

They say that, but the reality is quite different. Why are you making an argument based on a false premise?

Actually the opposite will be the case. Jobs that used to pay $10.10 an hour will now pay more, in order to attract the higher skilled worker.

Why should a higher skilled worker perform a job requiring a specialized skill set, when they can perform a job for the same amount that does not require a specialized skill set?

Swood1000

They say that, but the reality is quite different.

But the point you sent me from the CBO link says that real income would decrease, on net, by $17 billion for families whose income would otherwise have been six times the poverty threshold or more. You disagree with this?

SkyHunter

Do I disagree that they said it? Or that their projection will manifest in reality?

Are you arguing that 900,000 families in poverty should remain there because lifting them out of poverty might cost families with incomes six times or more over the poverty limit 10¢ more for their pizza?

The CBO is notoriously conservative in their estimates, so when they conclude that the end result is a $2 billion increase in real income. I would wager that the increased spending power of the poor and it’s effect on employment is being underestimated. The actual increase in real income will likely be higher.

Swood1000

Why should a higher skilled worker perform a job requiring a specialized skill set, when they can perform a job for the same amount that does not require a specialized skill set?

In cases where, because of competition, the business is not able to raise its prices then they will have the same amount of funds as they had before to pay wages. The only way to give more to the lowest group is to either fire some of them or shift the income from those who were earning more.

Also, jobs requiring greater skill are more interesting than ones that require less skill. If I were an electrician earning X and suddenly I found out that the dishwashers were also earning X it would not make me want to be a dishwasher, although I think I would be very upset if I had been earning X + 10 and now I was only being paid X, in order to make up the difference to the dishwashers.

SkyHunter

Your scenarios are not realistic. A business can always raise it’s prices to remain profitable. If they can’t afford to pay a living wage and remain competitive they will be replaced by competitors who can.

A dishwasher’s job is easily filled, an electricians is not. There will always be demand for skilled workers.

Swood1000

A business can always raise it’s prices to remain profitable.

Of course there is no getting around the fact that when you raise the price of something you lower the demand for it. Let’s take putt-putt miniature golf. As you raise the entrance fee fewer and fewer people are going to decide to go play putt-putt. At some point their costs will exceed their revenue and they will not be able to stay in business. If the problem is that you have legislated a high cost of running a putt-putt business nobody is going to be able to run one, and that industry will just die. Is it better for those people to be out of work?

SkyHunter

Would it be such a bad thing if the putt-putt golf industry died?

Swood1000

Aesthetically, no. Economically, for the people who work there, yes.

SkyHunter

The people working there are part of the demographic that will see 900,000 of it’s members lifted out of poverty.

Are you arguing that because putt-putt employees might lose their job that these 900,000 should remain in poverty?

Swood1000

I am saying that there are costs associated with this. Money doesn’t come out of nowhere. I think there are some people who think that the money will just come out of the pockets of greedy owners but that is a little too glib.

What about this: the electrician needs a helper. He finds somebody who is looking for a job and who seems bright enough and agrees to sign him on and teach him the craft in exchange for room and board and a small amount of pocket money. Is that OK?

SkyHunter

And the CBO says the CBA is positive, the benefits outweigh the costs.

Depends. Is the helper covered by insurance?

A construction site is a hazardous environment. It would be better to pay the helper and then charge him for room and board.

Easier bookkeeping.

Swood1000

But the point is that you would allow an exception to the minimum wage requirements if the worker is being trained?

SkyHunter

No. If the training is to be considered part of the compensation, let that be a separate transaction.

Swood1000

But my understanding is that this is a part of the problem. That it is illegal to pay less than the minimum wage and so this type of setup is forbidden and people who would have been hired and paid less until they acquired the skill are not given the opportunity because it’s too expensive to hire unproductive people.

SkyHunter

Until it becomes more economically feasible to to pay to train new workers than to try and lure experienced workers from your competitor.

Swood1000

But if a teenager is willing to work for $3 per hour, thinking that after a year he will be qualified to apply for a job paying much more than that, why should we forbid him from doing that?

SkyHunter

Because children should not be exploited.

Swood1000

Let’s assume we are talking about an 18 year old who has finished with school.

SkyHunter

How is he supposed to live on $3 an hour?

Swood1000

(a) that’s his business, or
(b) with his parents

SkyHunter

No it isn’t just his business. You will pay to subsidize his life in order for his employer to steal his life.

Swood1000

You will pay to subsidize his life in order for his employer to steal his life.

In that case we have a procedure that allows any person to receive an exemption from the minimum wage law and such persons are not eligible for public assistance. So nobody is subsidizing him. His room and board during this period are coming from his savings or his relatives or his employer. He thinks this is a good deal because it will qualify him for a high-paying job.

Why did you say it was OK if the electrician’s assistant was earning nothing but not if he is earning $3 per hour. I think they actually do currently have that distinction, making the unpaid intern exempt from the minimum wage law. You would require the person to be unpaid?

SkyHunter

Why should all the responsibility fall on the individual and/or society, to train a person to work for private industry?

You are assuming the person has a savings, or parents who can help. I do believe that all internships should pay at least a minimum wage, many pay even more. That being said, the experience of working an internship/externship is valuable. I agreed to work an unpaid externship as part of my education and have no regrets.

But we are not really talking about an 18 year old male in an apprenticeship program, or the teenager at the putt-putt golf course. There are ~76 million minimum wage workers. of those, 61 million are over 25.

Why should society subsidize their employers by making up the difference between what they are paid and what they need to live?

Swood1000

Why should society subsidize their employers by making up the difference

I stipulated that those who apply for an exemption are not eligible for public assistance.

I agreed to work an unpaid externship

My daughter is currently getting her M. Arch. in Architecture at a school that has a co-op program. She and I have had many discussions about this. She had difficulty finding her first co-op and was finally at a point where she was willing to do it unpaid. However, she found a paid one and because of her schoolwork and references has had no trouble finding paid co-ops since.

She thinks that architecture firms that don’t pay their interns are the scum of the earth. But there’s a market out there. And the firms who want the best co-ops have to pay them.

If a young person says that he believes that the value of the education he gets will more than compensate for the lower income, why isn’t that his business, as long as he is not on the public dole?

SkyHunter

I think you are using the exception to define the rule.

I certainly would not deny someone earning $3 an hour food stamps.

Unpaid internships while despicable, are really not the big social issue IMO. Closing the gap between the minimum wage and a living wage will do more to maintain economic and social stability than anything else Congress can do.

Swood1000

Here is a letter signed by a bunch of economists (although I see at least one politician here). One of the things they say is:

“In fact, CBO estimates that less than 20 percent of the workers who would see a wage increase to $10.10 actually live in households that earn less than the federal poverty line.”

If that is true, then why object if one of these people, of his own free will, wants to trade his services for training. After all, they say that it is exactly the young just starting out who are most affected by increased unemployment.

SkyHunter

They don’t cite supporting research, it is just a list of names as far as I am concerned. The CBO is baseline.

The idea is not just to get people people above the federal poverty limit for Medicaid, it is to guarantee low skilled workers a living wage in exchange for irreplaceable moments of their time.

Swood1000

…it is to guarantee low skilled workers a living wage…

Why don’t we just skip the half-measures and make the minimum wage $50 per hour? Happy days for everybody, right?

Workers with a disabilty may be paid wages less than the federal minimum wage. I presume that you would be in favor of removing this exemption so that these people will earn as much as everyone else?

SkyHunter

Because it is not an arbitrary number, it is based on a reasonable cost of living. Which is IMO about 3 times the poverty limit.

Swood1000

it is based on a reasonable cost of living

But it is such a pittance! It still leaves them with the wolf at the door. How can you oppose a wage that will give them much more security?

And what about the workers with a disability? Remove that exemption so that they can earn as much as the others?

SkyHunter

A reasonable cost of living would be enough for savings and retirement. Raising the minimum wage puts upward pressure on other wages, which is why it is phased in. My opinion is that a living wage is 200% of the poverty limit for a family of four. That is about $22.50 an hour. For a family of 2 it is $15 an hour, so $10.10 is not enough, but it is a move in the right direction.

An economy works best when people have money to spend. Those at 300% of the poverty limit and higher can afford to pay more for goods and services. As demand rises due to the greater and more diverse purchasing power of low wage workers, demand for higher wage jobs will also increase, which will put more upward pressure on skilled wages.

Eventually the system will achieve a new equilibrium and people will hardly remember how it used to be.

Swood1000

And what about the workers with a disability? Remove that exemption so that they can earn as much as the others?

SkyHunter

No. That is a red herring distraction. Disabled people already receive disability income.

Swood1000

Are you talking about SSI? That is only for people who have limited income. Isn’t that like saying that poor people don’t need a minimum wage because they are eligible for public assistance?

SkyHunter

Society should care for people with disabilities IMO. And people are always free to work as independent contractors on a production basis, disabled or not.

Swood1000

But you claim that the minimum wage should be increased so that those at the bottom of the wage scale will have a larger income. The same logic would apply also to the disabled. You do not apply it to the disabled because you know that it would result in greatly increased unemployment among the disabled.

However when I suggest that perhaps the tension between higher employment and higher wages should be resolved in favor of higher employment for 18 year olds who receive an exemption after they certify that they are learning a skill and agree that they will be ineligible for public assistance, you say that I am “biased toward business owners, not workers.”

Do you really think that everyone who questions the wisdom of increasing the minimum wage is doing so out of a desire to favor the business owners over the workers?

SkyHunter

No, that is a strawman. I claim the minimum wage should be increased to a living wage because paying less is immoral.

The fact that this will also stimulate the economy by improving the spending power of the masses is just a side benefit.

Too qualify for the reduced disability wage, a person must be legally disabled. That means they are already eligible for disability income. My position is that the disabled don’t need to work, but if they can, and they want to, they should be allowed to work for a reduced wage commensurate with their reduced productivity.

There is no evidence that your idea would result in higher employment. Apprenticeships are a tiny portion of the minimum wage workforce, so it would have a negligible impact at best.

Yes. Everyone who questions the wisdom of making the minimum wage a living wage favors capital over labor.

Swood1000

Let me just be clear where you stand. Which of the following do you disagree with:

1. The minimum wage increases unemployment because some employers determine that the economic benefit to the business of certain positions or employees is less than the cost of the minimum wage.

2. The higher the minimum wage, the greater the resulting unemployment.

3. Teenagers and the lowest skilled people are affected the most by this.

4. The unemployment often results from attrition – replacements are not hired for employees who leave.

5. If an employer determines that the benefit to the organization from hiring an employee is less than the cost of the employee, then he or she should not hire the employee.

6. The minimum wage should be raised to the amount deemed necessary to live on without considering the effect on unemployment.

7. A person should not be permitted to work at a reduced wage in order to gain experience for his resumé because this favors capital over labor but the same person should be permitted to work at no wage because this does not favor capital over labor.

SkyHunter

1. There is no evidence that this is the case. While some employers may eliminate jobs, others increase hiring to meet the increased demand created by the enhanced purchasing power.

2. No evidence that this occurs. In fact, the evidence suggests otherwise.

3. Agreed, teenagers and low skilled workers are the ones most effected by minimum wage laws.

4. People who retire or take another job do not effect unemployment.

5. Agree.

6. Disagree. The effect on unemployment is considered, and found to be negligible,

7. Disagree.

Swood1000

4. People who retire or take another job do not effect unemployment.

Unless that person is not replaced.

Swood1000

There is no evidence that this is the case.

It might depend on where we are in the business cycle:

“In contractions, an increase in the minimum wage is found to have a substantial and very significant negative effect on both white and black teenage employment that is more adverse for black teenagers: a 10% increase in the minimum wage decreases white and black employment by 3.10% and 5.03%, respectively. …In expansions, no significant negative employment effect is found. A 10% increase in the minimum wage is associated with a change of + 0.16% and – 0.58%, respectively for whites and blacks.” http://www.economics.buffalo.edu/contrib/people/faculty/documents/41109minwage.pdf

Of course the result during an expansion may just be a lower increase in employment than there would otherwise have been.

SkyHunter

The CBO estimates -500,000 jobs and 900,000 lifted out of poverty.

You are arguing against a strawman. The actual employment numbers show no discernible effects of raising the minimum wage. The bulk of economic studies show that raising the minimum wage has no discernible effect on employment.

Experts generally agree, raising the minimum wage will have no discernible effect on employment and overwhelmingly agree that the benefits would far outweigh any negative impact on unemployment.

Swood1000

2. The higher the minimum wage, the greater the resulting unemployment.

2. No evidence that this occurs. In fact, the evidence suggests otherwise.

Would you agree that a minimum wage of $50 would increase unemployment?

SkyHunter

No.

Swood1000

You’re not maintaining a semblance of actually believing what you are saying. Of course there are many labor intensive businesses who operate on a thin profit margin who would simply be put out of business. Who could doubt it?

SkyHunter

Examples please.

Swood1000

A business employs a room full of people, each of whom sits at a desk and operates a piece of machinery in order to produce a child’s toy. So far they have been able to keep their costs down so that this toy can compete with other toys that are mass-produced entirely by machines. If the labor costs are tripled, however, this product will no longer be able to compete.

SkyHunter

What is the name of this company?

Swood1000

“Typical Labor-Intensive Low Profit Margin Corp.”

SkyHunter

IE, you don’t have an example, you made it up to bolster a weak argument.

Swood1000

Are you saying that you doubt the existence of many labor-intensive businesses having a slim profit margin?

SkyHunter

No. I was simply asking for an example, which you could not provide, so their existence at this point is still speculative.

Swood1000

I see. So you are demanding proof that the tripling of labor costs will require a business to raise the cost of its product, and that there is a limit beyond which the cost cannot be raised and still sell.

SkyHunter

No, I am asking for an example of a company whose costs are primarily labor, whose employees work for minimum wage, that will go under if the minimum wage is incrementally raised to $10.10 an hour over two years.

Swood1000

This is again in the line in which you appeared to deny that raising the minimum wage to $50/hour would increase unemployment.

SkyHunter

Forget about the $50 dollar fantasy and stick with the proposed $10.10 reality.

The proposed minimum wage bill would raise the minimum wage to $8.20 an hour, beginning on the first day of the third month after the bill is enacted. Giving employers 90 days to prepare for a 95¢ increase in the minimum wage. This will primarily impact fast food industry, though there will be an upward pressure on wages to keep valuable low wage employees.

One year later; another 95¢. At $9.15 an hour, it will impact clerks, cashiers, maids, etc., with more upward pressure to retain talent.

Two years later, another 95¢ for $10.10. And thereafter tied to the CPI.

These are modest increases that will lift a modest 900,000 above the poverty line, with minimal impact on overall employment.

Swood1000

Accountants typically make much more than the minimum wage. These people are paid more because there is a market operating according to supply and demand that requires employers to pay the amount necessary to get the people they need. Are we agreed that the law of supply and demand works properly for the accountants, and that they are paid the correct amount, which depends on the amount of value that they produce?

Do you think that the market for labor no longer works properly at the low end of the scale, so that, unlike the accountant, absent a minimum wage low-wage workers would be paid less than the value they produce? The minimum wage is then seen as remedying this market defect. Or do you think that the market still works properly but for reasons of social policy we have deemed it necessary for the government to intervene and require that some low-wage workers be paid more than the value that they produce? Of course, raising the minimum wage does not automatically raise the productivity of the worker – the two are independent.

SkyHunter

No, I think accountants are generally underpaid, under appreciated, and complicit in the system that keeps them that way. Raising the minimum wage will also put upward pressure on wages for accountants, since there will be both increased demand and increased competition.

Your argument assumes what is not in evidence. There is no evidence that minimum wage workers are paid less than the value they produce. And you can’t really provide said evidence because it is all subjective.

Who determines value and what is the criteria?

You and I likely have very different ideas about what constitutes value.

The market is not a Deity, and there is no such thing as a free market. I am not concerned with the market, I am concerned with the people. If one person employs another, they should compensate them for their time with a living wage. If they don’t believe the job is worth a living wage, they should do it themselves, or ask for volunteers, then compensate the volunteers as best they can.

Swood1000

Your argument assumes what is not in evidence. There is no evidence that minimum wage workers are paid less than the value they produce.

I did not assume this. I gave you an either/or and asked you whether the market works for the low-wage worker. One option said yes and one option said no.

But my supposition was that in general a free market is a fair way to set the prices of things. Unless the government intervenes it works by way of supply and demand. The seller tries to get as much as he can for the thing he is selling and the buyer tries to pay as little has he can for the thing he is buying. This is what sets prices. It is not a Deity. It is simply the mechanism that has always operated to determine the prices of things. Markets are influenced by many factors, rational and irrational.

Are you saying that in general you do not believe that markets are the correct way to arrive at the prices of things? Or is that only in the case of the labor market? What causes the accountant to be paid less than he should be paid?

SkyHunter

Workers are always paid less than the wealth they produce. If this were not the case the business would fail.

The problem with a free market based on supply and demand is that supplies can be manipulated to create demand, and vice versa. (Remember Kenny Boy from ENRON?)

What a person does for a living is more important than profit. I ran a construction business for years that made very little profit, but everyone had a job with a living wage, including me. I even paid the high school kid working summers double the minimum wage.

So I guess I am saying that in order for the markets to be fair, they need to be regulated. I consider the minimum/living wage issue to be separate from the market. IMO it is a fundamental moral issue.

As a society, do we value the individual enough to consider the dignity of a living wage as a right?

Swood1000

Workers are always paid less than the wealth they produce. If this were not the case the business would fail.

Instead of “value produced” I should have said “value to the employer,” since a market price is determined by the interplay between the value the seller places on the commodity being sold (labor) and the the value that the purchaser places on it.

As a society, do we value the individual enough to consider the dignity of a living wage a right?

But before we get to that question, does the market for the services of the computer programmer work properly? Or do you believe that there is something that gives employers an unfair advantage, so that programmers are paid less than they should be paid?

SkyHunter

Employers almost always have an unfair advantage over the individual. The name of the game is Capitalism and Capital always has an advantage in this system.

Swood1000

Capital always has an advantage in this system

But why do you say that? If I hire a programmer to do some work for me what gives me the advantage when we discuss the amount he is going to charge me?

SkyHunter

If you have no food and no means and I offer you a slice of bread for 8 hours of labor in my fields, and you negotiate for two slices… would you say you made a good deal?

It doesn’t matter that I have so much bread that most of it will rot before it is eaten, I have successfully kept my labor costs low.

Swood1000

If you have no food and no means and I offer you a slice of bread for 8 hours of labor in my fields, and you negotiate for two slices… would you say you made a good deal?

Yes but you have described a situation involving a built-in advantage for one side: the seller is starving. Are you saying that a programmer marketing his services is usually starving or for some other reason usually has no choice but to accept what is offered?

Let’s just consider the typical situation as we expect to see it in the United States today. The programmer is offering to do some programming and the purchaser is offering to pay him, they are negotiating a price and neither is starving (unless you think that programmers are usually starving). What advantage does the purchaser have?

SkyHunter

The purchaser has the advantage of resources. A programmer is often not personally disposed, or trained, to negotiate. So unless the programmer has a good agent, she is likely going to be at disadvantage in every negotiation with a well seasoned business negotiator.

Swood1000

The programmer has his hourly rate that he charges. He just has to tell the employer how many hours it will take and what the total bill will be. If it is a long and complex job he has his attorney to draw up the contract.

When you were in construction you knew what your costs were going to be and what the uncertainties were and how to allocate risk. Did the purchaser know about those things better than you? And couldn’t you hire an experienced attorney if you needed advice? What disadvantage were you under as a result of the resources of the purchaser?

SkyHunter

Your programmer scenario is for an independent contractor, not an employee.

I had a framing crew and framed houses. I charged more per square foot than other framers. I remember one occasion where the builder told me that he had another bid for $5000 less then mine. I expressed my regret and tried to hand him back the blue prints. He asked me to rebid the job, I told him I couldn’t and tried to hand him back the prints. Instead of taking the prints, he decided to stick with a known quantity.

I helped a developer become a gentleman builder. His houses were disasters until he hired me exclusively to frame his houses. He kept me busy for 3 years, never once asked me to lower my price. Once he became successful and no longer dependent on me, he started grinding me down on price. Which was one of the events that helped force me out of business.

You see, I only started the business because a builder wanted me to frame his houses and offered to bankroll me. I stayed in business because I did good work and provided better conditions for my workers. Once it became a struggle to break even it was no longer satisfying.

Swood1000

Your programmer scenario is for an independent contractor, not an employee.

But there is no difference between hiring an independent contractor and hiring an employee except that the employee doesn’t typically have a stated ending date. The relative bargaining positions are exactly the same when hiring an employee as when hiring an independent contractor. Independent contractors just have a different legal status for tax purposes.

Are you saying that the fact that the builder started grinding you down on price demonstrates that the employer has the advantage in this situation?

SkyHunter

Yes, once I had helped him become successful by delivering a quality product, instead of being grateful, he used that success as leverage against me.

Swood1000

But how did that keep you from marketing yourself to others? By that logic all buyers have the advantage because they can refuse to buy except on their terms. But similarly sellers can refuse to sell except on their terms.

SkyHunter

It is all about leverage. When he needed a good framer so that new houses didn’t creak and squeak and were plumb square and level, he accepted my bids without question, because he had no leverage. I offered him a competitive price that allowed him to see a 30% profit on most homes he built.

Once he had the leverage, he did not return the courtesy. I figured I must either become ruthless or quit. Since I don’t like the price I must pay for ruthlessness, I chose to quit.

Swood1000

But what was the leverage he had? Why was ruthlessness necessary? Why couldn’t you just offer your services at a fair price to someone else?

SkyHunter

Even though the quality of his houses suffered, and the crew he wanted me to bid against took 6 men and a forklift 6 months to frame a house that I planned to frame with 5 men and a forklift in 8-10 weeks, he was in a better position than I was to bargain. He had money and influence, I didn’t. He could afford to lose lots of money and stay in business, I couldn’t.

I had taken him at his word and committed to do my part.

What began as subdivision of 450, 2500 – 3000 sq ft, modest homes, turned into 250, 3500 – 700 sqft+, elaborate homes on a golf course. It was the largest and hottest development in the area. During the development phase, before the roads were in, I had to build all the maintenance buildings, so I invested in a full sized 4×4 truck to haul tools and materials off-road. I hired another crew leader and few more carpenters so I could train them to use my methods, so I could be ready to build 3 houses at a time, which was what he determined I would need in order to meet his schedule. As soon as the first foundation was finished, I leased a forklift to have on site. Three crews can efficiently share a forklift if they are in the same sub division. I built the first two houses ahead of schedule, but the next 3 plans were all behind schedule.

I had to find work. I picked up another house out of the development, which mean’t moving the forklift. Very expensive if you don’t have the capital to own your own equipment, and needs to be done during daylight so I lose it’s productivity for half a day or more.

The next three houses were still not ready. I am working 60 hour weeks and losing money, so I have to lay men off during a construction boom, while I find another house, ready for framing, and move the forklift again.

Finally the next house is ready to build, a spec house, based on a basic plan, of much smaller dimensions that we had built before in a less upscale development. Even though we had signed a contract months before, he told me he was unhappy the price, because I had built the same house only smaller for less $$$/sqft.

The basic plan did not have the more intricate architecture, such as the cantilevered balconies, a bridal staircase, and taller ceilings, etc. Bringing this to his attention however did not sway his opinion one bit. I had leverage at that point, since we already had a signed contract, and held firm.

I was unaware of confirmation bias, but he exhibited all the symptoms. He had taken the average price/sqft for smaller, more modest homes and plugged it into the larger more intricate homes. Nothing would change his mind. When I finished the house ahead of schedule again, because I have a large productive and expensive crew, it just reconfirmed his bias. I built the bigger more intricate house in the same amount of time I built the smaller version. Except I built the small one with 4 men, and the big one with 8 men and a forklift.

The next house was over 6000sqft, for a retired major league pitcher. There was a small crew run by two brothers working for another builder. The bid they gave him was about $10,000 less than mine. I couldn’t match it so he gave them the contract. He then told me he was putting everything out for open bid and that I should sharpen my pencil.

An accountant by trade from a wealthy family, he increased his inherited wealth by acquiring and subdividing farmland near cities and turning it into low density housing. He had a goal. He shared that goal with me and asked me to help him achieve it. Once he had achieved his goal, I was disposable.

Negotiations are rarely ever equal. One side usually has greater leverage and that side is usually the side with more capital. Capitalism reached it’s apex as a social institution in the 1950’s, as society evolves, the value of capital will decrease as other values grow. But the inequality in negotiations will still remain, the leverage won’t change, just the levers.

CB

Eew…

Swood1000

Negotiations are rarely ever equal. One side usually has greater leverage and that side is usually the side with more capital.

I still don’t see what his leverage was. If the programmer says that his hourly rate is X, and the employer says that he has found somebody whose hourly rate is .9X who will do the same job in the same amount of time, then that is only leverage if the progammer’s rate is higher than the rates of other programmers with comparable ability. If not, he realizes that the purchaser is willing to also pay the hidden cost of lower quality and he looks for other work. There’s an old saying among programmers: “You can have it inexpensively, quickly and at high quality. Pick any two.”

If there is a market for a person’s services then he does not have to sell them for less than he can get in the market, regardless of the resources of any one purchaser.

SkyHunter

That old saying predates computer programming.

Negotiations are rarely if ever equal. If you don’t understand why, I don’t think I can explain it any better.

Swood1000

Negotiations are rarely if ever equal.

Of course that’s true. The advantage lies on the side of the person who has the thing most desired by the other side. But look, it cannot be denied that if a programmer has a good reputation then there is a market for his services and he doesn’t accept a lower hourly rate just because the person making that offer has more money than the person making another offer. Don’t you agree?

CO2 levels rose ~50 ppm from 1990 – 2013, which is very close to the 65% estimated increase in emissions.

Swood1000

CO2 levels rose ~50 ppm from 1990 – 2013, which is very close to the 65% estimated increase in emissions.

What do you mean “very close”?

SkyHunter

Look at the graphic. In the 24 years previous, it rose ~30ppm, 50ppm is a 60% increase.

Swood1000

I looked at the abstracts.

Here is a carbon cycle diagram.

As CO2 is added to the atmosphere from fossil fuel combustion, it becomes part of the active carbon cycle. It gets distributed throughout the active sources and sinks, effecting them all, not just the atmosphere. The mere fact that Essenhigh believes that the increased CO2 is from natural warming, because of the size of the carbon flux is the first clue that he is on the wrong track. If CO2 could rise this fast in response to changes in global temperature, we would see evidence in the ice cores and other paleo-data. CO2 has not been this high in over 2.5 million years.

If the rise in CO2 were a response to global warming… what is the mechanism which is causing the planet is to warm more than it has in over 2.5 million years?

Robert H. Essenhigh is a mechanical engineer, not a climate scientist. Which might explain why his hypothesis is wrong on so many levels.

If you don’t mind I’m moving the conversation over here because the original site didn’t allow attached images.

Robert H. Essenhigh is a mechanical engineer, not a climate scientist. Which might explain why his hypothesis is wrong on so many levels.

Well, at least you’re not suggesting an ad hominem argument – that his argument fails because he is a mechanical engineer. Do you not have confidence in the opinion of anyone who lacks a degree in Climatology?

If the rise in CO2 were a response to global warming… what is the mechanism which is causing the planet is to warm more than it has in over 2.5 million years?

It is not warming more than it has in over 2.5 million years. Natural variability has resulted in episodes of warming a number of times within the past few thousands of years.

“The turnover time of CO2 in the atmosphere, measured as the ratio of the content to the fluxes through it, is about 4 years. This means that on average it takes only a few years before a CO2 molecule in the atmosphere is taken up by plants or dissolved in the ocean.”

Nor does he disagree with their estimation of what they refer to as “adjustment time”:

“This short time scale must not be confused with the time it takes for the atmospheric CO2 level to adjust to a new equilibrium if sources or sinks change. This adjustment time, corresponding to the lifetime in Table 1.1, is of the order of 50 – 200 years, determined mainly by the slow exchange of carbon between surface waters and the deep ocean.”

Essenhigh refers to “turnover time” as atmospheric residence time (RT) and says that this four year estimation is in line with the times found by 36 studies from 1957 to 1992, reporting RTs mostly in the range of 5 – 15 years. The problem, he says, is that a short RT would result in a lower concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere than we currently see. Take a look at his Figure 2, shown below. Line A is the actual concentration we see in the atmosphere. However, Line C is the increase we should see from anthropogenic sources where CO2 has a residence time of 10 years. Clearly, the actual concentrations are much higher, meaning that there must be some additional source of CO2 that is not anthropogenic.

SkyHunter

“Do you not have confidence in the opinion of anyone who lacks a degree in Climatology?”

I try and judge each opinion on it’s merits. The approach taken here was that of a mechanical engineer, not someone knowledgable of climate physics.

“It is not warming more than it has in over 2.5 million years. Natural variability has resulted in episodes of warming a number of times within the past few thousands of years.”

That is not true, but if it were, it would certainly disprove Essenhigh’s theory, since CO2 never exceeded 280ppm during the entire Holocene. If the modern CO2 concentration is a response to global warming, then it must be warmer now, than at anytime during the past 2.5 million years, since CO2 has not been this high for at least that long.

Essenhigh’s graph is just a picture generated by the numbers he is using and the assumptions he is making. Here is the part from the FAR that he neglects to include in his analysis.

Because of its complex cycle, the decay of excess CO2 in the atmosphere does not follow a simple exponential curve, and therefore a single time scale cannot be given to characterize the whole adjustment process toward a new equilibrium The two curves in Figure 1 2, which represent simulations of a pulse input of CO2 into the atmosphere using atmosphere-ocean models (a box model and a
General Circulation Model (GCM)), clearly show that the initial response (governed mainly by the uptake of CO2 by ocean surface waters) is much more rapid than the later response (influenced by the slow exchange between surface waters and deeper layers of the oceans) For example, the first reduction by 50 percent occurs within some 50 years, whereas the reduction by another 50 percent (to 25 percent of the initial value) requires approximately another 250 years The concentration will actually never return to its original value, but reach a new equilibrium level, about 15 percent of the total amount of CO2 emitted will remain in the atmosphere.

Swood1000

So, mechanical engineers such as, say, Stephen Schneider are not to be taken seriously?

That is not true…

Should we skip the battle of the graphs?

If the modern CO2 concentration is a response to global warming, then it must be warmer now, than at anytime during the past 2.5 million years, since CO2 has not been this high for at least that long.

I guess that raises the question of the reliability of different ways of determining CO2 levels. See the graphic below.

Here is the part from the FAR that he neglects to include in his analysis.

But this talks about the process of reaching a new equilibrium. That is not Essenhigh’s point. He is saying “How do we account for Line A when our level of anthropogenic emissions, assuming an RT of 10 years, should result in Line C?”

SkyHunter

“So, mechanical engineers such as, say, Stephen Schneider are not to be taken seriously?”

I never said that. I said I judge each opinion on it’s merits, not by whose opinion it is. He approached the problem in a way I would expect a mechanical engineer to approach it, linearly. Just because he fits the stereotype of typical mechanical engineer, does not mean that all mechanical engineers are linear thinkers.

Why does he assume a RT of 10 years?

Why does he assume the atmosphere is not the only CO2 reservoir?

He is just a loon who got past a sloppy peer review, if it was even peer reviewed, I just assumed it was because the response eviscerated it.

Battling graphs? The CO2 graph just shows that chemical analysis of CO2 was not very accurate, plant stomata, ice cores, and measuring infrared absorption. are shown to be very accurate.

The other is completely unsourced, we don’t even know what we are looking at.

Marcott 2013 is a multi-proxy reconstruction of global temperatures, published in Science Magazine.

Swood1000

Why does he assume a RT of 10 years?

Essenhigh refers to the IPCC First Assessment (1990) , Chapter 1 where they used a “turnover time” of 4 years. He said that this four year estimation is in line with the times found by 36 studies from 1957 to 1992, reporting RTs mostly in the range of 5 – 15 years. So he used 10 years as an average “short” RT.

Why does he assume the atmosphere is the only CO2 reservoir?

What are you referring to?

The FAR said it takes 50 years for levels to drop 50%, and 250 years them to drop another 50%, to 25%, and 15% will remain indefinitely.

Essenhigh’s conclusion is different. That’s why we are looking at it.

Battling graphs?

This was a reference to graphs that do or do not show a Medieval Warm Period, etc.

The other is completely unsourced, we don’t even know what we are looking at.

Essenhigh is misunderstanding how carbon flux works. Which is why his analysis doesn’t make any sense. The atmospheric RT of individual molecules is irrelevant, since it is only a small part of a larger system. More carbon in the atmosphere increases carbon flux in the fast carbon cycle. Essenhigh is only looking at the atmospheric flux, missing the bigger picture.

Why would you compare global temperature with Greenland temperature, when the two are known to diverge?

Swood1000

More carbon in the atmosphere increases carbon flux in the fast carbon cycle.

I understand how more carbon in the atmosphere will increase the carbon flux out of the atmosphere, but are you saying that it also increases the carbon flux into the atmosphere?

Why would you compare global temperature with Greenland temperature, when the two are known to diverge?

In what way are they known to diverge?

SkyHunter

Look at the Greenland ice core graph and compare it with the multi-proxy reconstruction and you can see how they diverge. Greenland’s climate is dominated by ocean currents, not global heat content, although there is a relationship between the two.

Swood1000

Apparently, according to Andy Revkin, this was the image from Marcott, 2013, until he was later forced to admit that

This appears not to be the only infirmity in the Marcott paper but when he begins with this kind of a misrepresentation out of the gate it makes one a little wary.

What’s with everybody trying to get rid of the MWP?

I understand how more carbon in the atmosphere will increase the carbon flux out of the atmosphere, but are you saying that it also increases the carbon flux into the atmosphere?

SkyHunter

Well, duh, the resolution is 300 years, what did you expect?

Do you understand the definition of specious?

Swood1000

Well, duh, the resolution is 300 years, what did you expect?

Do you understand the definition of specious?

Are you saying that the absence of statistical robustness for the 20th century portion is self-evident? Does the blame then fall on publications like Nature for either recklessly or intentionally misleading their readers by implying that the 20th century rise shown by the study was of some significance?

You do not find it misleading to present a graph, knowing that it lacks statistical significance, and knowing that it will be displayed in publications as if it could be relied on?

SkyHunter

“Are you saying that the absence of statistical robustness for the 20th century portion is self-evident?”

Yes. Too most readers of Nature Magazine, the fact that 100 years of a 300 year resolution is statistically insignificant, is self evident.

Since there is a better record for the 20th century than a multi-proxy reconstruction with a 300 year resolution, it is not an issue.

The full reconstruction is statistically significant, that is what matters.

Swood1000

Yes. Too most readers of Nature Magazine, the fact that 100 years of a 300 year resolution is statistically insignificant, is self evident.

It was insufficient data, not just insufficient resolution. It must just be the writers for Nature Magazine for whom it was not self-evident. Either that or they intentionally misrepresented the study:

The full reconstruction is statistically significant, that is what matters.

So you think there is nothing misleading about tacking an inflammatory 20th century “hockey blade” onto the graph as if it has statistical significance, knowing that it has none?

SkyHunter

The hockey stick blade is the instrumental record, not the multi-proxy reconstruction.

Marcott et al. make the point, in the Nature paper, that the last 100 years is of a shorter duration than the smoothing interval and is based on fewer proxies of the type they used for the rest of the reconstruction.

It is the Andy Revkin who is misrepresenting, not Marcott et al or Nature Magazine.

Swood1000

The hockey stick blade is the instrumental record, not the multi-proxy reconstruction.

Are you saying that this is not Figure 1b from Marcott (2013), showing a hockey blade as a part of the multi-proxy reconstruction?

Are you saying that Marcott did not lead the NSF to say this in a press release:

And are you saying that this did not cause Nature to say “…temperatures have been increasing at a dramatic clip: from the first decade of the twentieth century to now, global average temperatures rose from near their coldest point since the ice age to nearly their warmest…”?

SkyHunter

But the statement is supported by the data from their study. That data is statistically robust for the past 11,000 years. But since the smoothing is 300 years, and some of the proxies drop in recent times, the last 100 years is not statistically robust. But since we have the GMST record for the 20th century, it is irrelevant.

Swood1000

is not statistically robust

If a graph is supported by statistically significant data do you think it is appropriate to append a portion that is not supported by statistically significant data, without any demarcation as to the different type, leaving the impression that the entire graph is statistically significant?

But since we have the GMST record for the 20th century, it is irrelevant.

Suppose a study shows a finding that X is true, when in fact that was not found by the study. Is this of no consequence if, in fact, X is true?

SkyHunter

You are looking for something that does not exist. Marcott did not misrepresent the last 100 years. And truncating the instrumental record onto the reconstruction is not misleading.

Swood1000

And truncating the instrumental record onto the reconstruction is not misleading.

Does this graph represent a truncation of the instrument record onto the reconstruction?

SkyHunter

Truncate was a poor word choice. Mann truncated the tree ring data at the point where it begins to diverge, and replaced it with the instrumental record. Marcott et. al. does not do this, which is why they said that the last 100 years lacks statistical significance in their reconstruction. There are statistically robust reconstructions, as well as the instrumental record, so it is not an issue, since their reconstruction over the 11,000 years is robust.

The blade of the hockey stick is the most robust measure of global temperature, yet it is the part of every reconstruction that deniers attack.

Why do you think that is?

Swood1000

There are statistically robust reconstructions of the past 100 years, as well as the instrumental record, so it is not an issue.

You’ve got me confused. The 20th century portion of that graph is shown as a purple line going straight up. That is not the instrument record but is part of the reconstruction. And that part of the reconstruction is not statistically robust, right?

SkyHunter

“The 20th century portion of that graph is shown as a purple line going straight up. That is not the instrument record but is part of the reconstruction. And that part of the reconstruction is not statistically robust, right?”

Yes. Because of the 300 year resolution, combined with the fact that certain proxies like ice cores, take decades to form and are therefore not useful for recent reconstructions. The data used in this reconstruction had an average resolution of 120 years, making it impossible to resolve century scale temperatures. One century is less than one data point on the graph. So the 20th century is essentially one data point, derived from fewer proxies, smoothed from the previous data point, but not from the future data point, and therefore not robust in this reconstruction.

There are higher resolution proxies for the 20th century, as well as the instrumental record. While the 20th century warming is not statistically significant in this type of reconstruction, because this reconstruction does not resolve to century scale resolution, the 20th century warming in this reconstruction is consistent with high resolution proxy evidence for the 20th century, including the instrumental record.

Swood1000

While the 20th century warming is not statistically significant in this type of reconstruction…the 20th century warming in this reconstruction is consistent with high resolution proxy evidence for the 20th century, including the instrumental record.

Suppose a study shows a finding that X is true, when in fact that was not found by the study in a reliable way. Is this of no consequence if, in fact, X is true?

SkyHunter

Now you are becoming desperate.

What do you have against Shaun Marcott, that you want to accuse him of scientific misconduct?

You can become a member of the AAAS for free, and read the paper yourself, the way it is being represented to you by the professional deniers is not what the paper says.

Marcott et. al. 2013 never claimed robustness in their reconstruction for the 20th century. In fact they state explicitly that it is less robust.

Our data set exhibits several important strengths, as well as limitations, as compared to global and hemispheric reconstructions of the past 1500 years (2, 3, 7, 8). For example, whereas reconstructions of the past millennium rapidly lose data coverage with age, our coverage increases with age (Fig. 1, G and H). Published reconstructions of the past millennium are largely based on tree rings and may underestimate low-frequency (multicentury-to-millennial) variability because of uncertainty in detrending (9) [although progress is being made on this front (10)], whereas our lower-resolution records are well suited for reconstructing longer-term changes.

This is what professional deniers do. They take a specious point and confuse the layperson. And they do it for money, which makes them professionals.

Swood1000

Thanks for the link! I’ll read it.

Swood1000

What do you have against Shaun Marcott

I don’t have anything against him. But what scientific standard is he to be held to? Scientific fact: Marcott’s temperature reconstruction does not allow any conclusions to be made about the period after 1900.

Statement from study:

“Our global temperature reconstruction for the past 1500 years is indistinguishable within uncertainty from the Mann et al.”

which, together with Figure 1A, caused the study to be reported in numerous places like this:

“The study, published Thursday in the journal Science, confirms the now famous “hockey stick” graph that Michael Mann published more than a decade ago. That study showed a sharp upward temperature trend over the past century after more than a thousand years of relatively flat temperatures.

“But the key, said lead author Shaun Marcott of Oregon State University, is that temperatures are shooting through the roof faster than we’ve ever seen.

“”What we found is that temperatures increased in the last 100 years as much as they had cooled in the last 6,000 or 7,000,” he said. “In other words, the rate of change is much greater than anything we’ve seen in the whole Holocene,” referring to the current geologic time period, which began around 11,500 years ago.” http://grist.org/climate-energy/a-bigger-badder-climate-hockey-stick/

Marcott clearly was eager to leave the impression that his data had produced the same “hockey blade” that Mann’s study had shown. He said that the records he used “produce the same result.” Buried in the text he calls the modern warming “probably not robust” but then why does he report that result in his graph, knowing that the graph would be the thing reported?

Is this an example of a study reporting a result for which the study developed insufficient evidence?

SkyHunter

I know you are smart enough to understand and I believe you can overcome your cognitive bias.

The last 100 years of global temperature is confirmed by the instrumental record. Marcott et. al. does not say much about the last 100 years in their reconstruction, in fact, their Common Era ends in 1950. Their reconstruction shows that global temperature increase over the last 100 years is unprecedented during the last 11,000 years. Their study does not need to be robust for the last 100 years, because the instrumental record is robust.

They used temporally long proxies with low resolution to reconstruct the temperature over the last 11,000 years. In that 11,000 years, never has global temperature increased as fast as it has in the last 100 years. The study does not need to confirm the last 100 years because the temperature rise in the last 100 years is confirmed by the instrumental record.

If you want to dispute the instrumental record, WUWT is still challenging it, Anthony would welcome anything you can contribute to help his cause.

Swood1000

Their study does not need to be robust for the last 100 years, because the instrumental record is robust.

OK, the Mann hockey blade was based on the instrumental record. Marcott said “the records we use are completely independent, and produce the same result.” But you are saying that the records he relied on were not completely independent. They were the exact same instrument record?

SkyHunter

Mann’s original reconstruction was based on primarily NH proxies including tree rings. There is a known divergence problem with tree rings in the NH after 1960. Mann truncated the tree ring data and plotted the instrumental record in it’s place. Marcott et. al. do not do this. If read the paper you would know that they do not include the instrumental record in their reconstruction, but they do compare it.

To compare our Standard5×5 reconstruction with modern climatology, we aligned the stack’s mean for the interval 510 to 1450 yr B.P. (where yr B.P. is years before 1950 CE) with the same interval’s mean of the global Climate Research Unit error-in-variables (CRU-EIV) composite temperature record (2), which is, in turn, referenced to the 1961–1990 CE instrumental mean (Fig. 1A).

The instrumental record is the most robust data record we have. proxy data is calibrated using the insrumental record. The blade of the hockey stick is the most well measured part of any reconstruction, regardless of the proxies used.

Let me put it another way. We already know that since 1900 global average temperature has increased over 0.8ºC. Marcott et. al. shows us that it took 1800 years in the early Holocene (11,300 – 9500), to warm 0.6ºC, where it Plateaued for 4000 years (9500 – 5500), then cooled for the next 5000 by 0.7ºC. The obvious conclusion is that the modern temperature spike is unprecedented in 11,300 years and consistent with the laws of physics.

Swood1000

If read the paper you would know that they do not include the instrumental record in their reconstruction, but they do compare it.

Yes, I actually did read the paper. And I saw their instrument references. And I believe that what you are saying is that their reconstruction for the last 100 years, while not supported by significant data from their study is made reliable by being supported by the instrument record.

But then it is not true, for this period, that “the records we use are completely independent, and produce the same result.” They are the same records for this period that Mann used, correct? Or at least his data are made reliable by the same records.

SkyHunter

You are parsing. Mann used primarily lamd based proxies in the northern hemisphere, Marcott used primarily marine based proxies distributed around the globe.

Swood1000

Mann relied on the instrument record for the last 100 years, right? Marcott decided to include some unreliable data, which you say becomes reliable because of the same instrument record that Mann relied on. Right?

SkyHunter

Mann used the instrumental record after 1960, the last 100 years of the Marcott et. al. reconstruction is less than one datapoint, because they used temporally large scale proxies with an average resolution of 120 years.

A proxy reconstruction does not need to extend into the 20th century, because we have already measured the 20th century. It simply needs to be comparable, which Marcott et. al. did by converting their data stack to the same grid format used by HadCRUT.

This is not a real issue. It is manufactured doubt being sold by unscrupulous peddlers.

Swood1000

“…from the first decade of the twentieth century to now, global average temperatures rose from near their coldest point since the ice age to nearly their warmest, Marcott and his team report today in Science.”

Why did Nature report it like this, as if it was the result of his study, if Marcott was trying to be transparent that he had nothing new to add about the 20th century?

SkyHunter

Simple deduction. The Holocene temperature had fallen to it’s lowest point in 11.000 years during the LIA, is what Marcott et. al. shows. Then the warming since the end of the LIA has been measured by instruments, the instrumental record.

Marcott’s reconstruction of the Holocene reconstructs the beginning of the Holocene through the end of the LIA, 1850, with great skill. After that certain proxies begin to drop out and the 300 year smoothing begins to lose robustness at 150 year from present, which in this study was 1950. Since the instrumental record already covers the last 130 years, Marcott’s data doesn’t need to reconstruct it, it has already been measured more accurately than any proxy reconstruction. The press release assumes that it’s readers are aware of the instrumental record and not looking at a proxy reconstruction with an average resolution of 120 years and a 300 year smoothing to confirm it.

Swood1000

The straightforward way of doing it is the way they did it in that first graph you showed, where they just truncated and did not show the last 100 years of the reconstruction and superimposed the instrument record in a different color to differentiate it. But Marcott wanted it to seem that he was independently finding the same hockey blade as Mann. But without using the same data that Mann used to bolster it, his hockey blade was not reliable.

SkyHunter

No. Marcott is saying that the last 1500 years of his reconstruction and Mann’s agree within the margin for error. He explicitly stated that his reconstruction is not statistically significant for the last century.

We don’t need to reconstruct the 20th century, we have already measured it.

Swood1000

We don’t need to reconstruct the 20th century, we have already measured it.

Then why did Marcott include a 20th century portion in his reconstruction? Wasn’t it because he wanted to say “Look, my reconstruction found the same hockey blade shape that Mann found, and I used different data.” He didn’t want to say “Look, I found the same hockey stick shaft that Mann found, and if I use the same instrumental record that he used then I will have the same blade that he had.”

SkyHunter

The blade is the instrumental record. Mann didn’t find it, it had already been measured.

What Mann found was that such a rise was unprecedented in the last 2000 years and what Marcott found was that it was unprecedented in the last 11,000.

Are you saying that it is OK to report “We found that X is true” when they did not find that X is true, as long as X is true?

SkyHunter

What they are saying is that they used the same 1961-1990 average temperature as the baseline for comparing their reconstruction to Mann’s. IE, the zero line on the chart.

Swood1000

Marcott was not saying that the data for the 20th century were not robust. He was saying that they did an alternate analysis of their proxy data that yielded a much smaller 20th-century uptick, but that the difference between this and their principal analysis were “probably not robust.”

This implied that the uptick was insensitive to changes in methodology, and was therefore reliable. It was apparently not until after the study was published that Marcott referred to the 20th century part of the reconstruction itself as not robust. Correct?

“In addition to the previously mentioned averaging schemes, we also implemented the RegEM algorithm (11) to statistically infill data gaps in records not spanning the entire Holocene, which is particularly important over the past several centuries (Fig. 1G). Without filling data gaps, our Standard 5×5 reconstruction (Fig. 1A) exhibits 0.6°C greater warming over the past ~60 yr B.P. (1890 to 1950 CE) than our equivalent infilled 5° × 5° area-weighted mean stack (Fig. 1, C and D). However, considering the temporal resolution of our data set and the small number of records that cover this interval (Fig. 1G), this difference is probably not robust.”

SkyHunter

“It was apparently not until after the study was published that Marcott referred to the 20th century part of the reconstruction itself as not robust. Correct?”

No, they stated it implicitly in the original paper. I already highlighted the quote.

Swood1000

No, they stated it implicitly in the original paper. I already highlighted the quote.

You are referring to the quote below? Where exactly do they say that the reconstruction of the past century is not robust? I see them saying:

Where is the part saying that the last century of their reconstruction is not robust?

“Our data set exhibits several important strengths, as well as limitations, as compared to global and hemispheric reconstructions of the past 1500 years (2, 3, 7, 8). For example, whereas reconstructions of the past millennium rapidly lose data coverage with age, our coverage increases with age (Fig. 1, G and H). Published reconstructions of the past millennium are largely based on tree rings and may underestimate low-frequency (multicentury-to-millennial) variability because of uncertainty in detrending (9) [although progress is being made on this front (10)], whereas our lower-resolution records are well suited for reconstructing longer-term changes.”

SkyHunter

Simple deduction. If a reconstruction gains robustness with age, it is less robust in the present. Not to mention, any reconstruction with a 300 year smoothing is not going to be statistically significant for the last 100 years.

It is obvious to me, and anyone else for that matter with knowledge of paleoclimate reconstructions and statistics, that their choice of proxies and methods would not produce a robust 20th century reconstruction. They had to state it specifically, because unscrupulous liars like Andy Revkin, used this specious fact to attack the validity of the reconstruction, as well as the credibility of the authors.

Andy Revkin has no credibility, but he is not a scientist, he is a science denier, therefore, he doesn’t need credibility.

CB

“Andy Revkin has no credibility, but he is not a scientist, he is a science denier”

Wow, he really is, isn’t he!?

He does the false equivalence and parrots their dishonest talking points and everything:

I had him confused with someone else, am not even sure he is a denier. But he certainly gives them a platform in the NY Times. Very subtle, disguised as open debate among equals.

I suspect he may just be cashing in on an unfilled niche as a journalist. An opinion column that covers the both the science and the denial of the science. I can’t find any fault with that. It is a false equivalency, but it is educational none the less.

CB

I dunno, that column is pretty bad!

“global temperatures have been relatively stable for a decade and may even drop in the next few years.”

No and no! The first claim is false, the second is based on… what, exactly? Magic?

SkyHunter

I agree, but then, I am biased. Objectively I can see that he fills a natural niche.

CB

It’s not bias, it’s simple fact! Andy Revkin is a quasi-Denier at best.

If he actually understands the issue (and if he’s going to be paid to write about it, he most certainly should)… he should know global temperatures have not been “relatively stable”, but continue to increase.

He should know the energy in the Earth’s climate system is stored in the ocean, not the atmosphere, and he should know this energy continues to increase. He should also know that looking at the temperature of the atmosphere is absolutely no reasonable way to gauge what’s going on.

He’s either incompetent or immoral… which is the same choice Climate Deniers give themselves all the time…

SkyHunter

Like I said, I think he is offering what he considers an objective journalistic representation. He tries not to alienate either side, that increases the diversity and number of his readers. It is a numbers thing, he is filling a natural niche created by the gap between those who inform their opinion from science, and those who inform their opinion from industry propaganda.

CB

He’s certainly alienating me!

Swood1000

If a reconstruction gains robustness with age, it is less robust in the present.

Is there not a difference between “less robust” and “not robust”? For example .01 and .05 can describe varying degrees of robustness, both being robust.

The fact remains that he did not state in the paper that the last century was “not robust” but only those familiar with the statistical smoothing method he was using would surmise that. Correct? Which explains the whole raft of prestigious publications that failed to report that aspect of it?

Do you really think that it is appropriate to fail to explicitly disclose that part of a graph is not reliable?

SkyHunter

Why should he state the obvious?

Why would anyone want to use proxies with an average interval of 120 years to reconstruct the last 100?

The notion is preposterous. The best argument that can be made is that low resolution proxies miss short term fluctuations, but the inclusion of ice cores with 20 year resolution solves that problem because such higher frequency shifts would be captured in the ice cores.

The last part of the graph is reliable, all they show is the 1σ for the end of their reconstruction.

The red, is the HadCRU temperature record.

Are you saying the instrumental record is not robust, or that they should not have included it for comparison?

But if you look at the comparison to other, reconstructions, it is obvious that Marcott’s present day is 100 years ago.

Swood1000

But that is not the graph from Marcott’s study. If it had been he would have not have come under so much criticism. This is the graph from Marcott’s study. They came up with yours only after they started taking heat for the original graph.

Swood1000

I was referring to the one I originally posted.

But isn’t even that one misleading? Somebody put a high-resolution line showing a spike next to a low-resolution line incapable of showing a spike. Isn’t that the gist of it?

SkyHunter

No. Such a spike represents an enormous amount of heat, it would linger for centuries.

Swood1000

Are you saying that if such a spike had occurred during, say, the MWP, that we would see such a spike in the reconstruction?

Why assume the existence of that which is not in evidence. The ice cores have a resolution of 20 years. There is no evidence of a 100 year spike in temperature comparable to the 20th century. If one did occur, it represents such a tremendous amount of heat, it would have resolved over 300 years. You can’t hide a spike in temperature like that in 300 years.

Swood1000

Why would anyone want to use proxies with an average interval of 120 years to reconstruct the last 100?

Then why show that part of the reconstruction?

SkyHunter

It is not shown as part of the reconstruction. The last datapoint on the Marcott reconstruction is the average global temperature from 1651 – 1950. The red line is clearly labeled as the HadCRU instrumental record. They described quite clearly, and how they converted their data into the same HadCRU format so that they could compare them.

Swood1000

It is not shown as part of the reconstruction. The last datapoint on the Marcott reconstruction is the average global temperature from 1651 – 1950.

You are referring to his ex post facto graph, I believe. The one created after the study was published to try to get him out of hot water. His original Figure 1b shows the recent proxies as a part of the reconstruction, does it not?

Swood1000

Apparently, the “non-robust” part of the graph could be even less than that. Marcott’s Science paper is derived from the fourth chapter of his PhD thesis, which uses the same 73 proxy records and seemingly identical methods. But there is no uptick in that chart.

The 73 proxies were all collected by previous researchers, of which 31 are derived from alkenones. It appears that if Marcott had used the end dates as calculated by the specialists who compiled the original data, there would have been no 20th-century uptick in their graph, as was the case in his PhD thesis. But Marcott re-dated a number of core tops and this created the uptick at the end of their graph. It was not a feature of the proxy data, but rather was an artifact of re-dating the underlying cores.

Furthermore, the study did not disclose this step. In their online supplementary information the authors said they had assumed the core tops were dated to the present “unless otherwise noted in the original publication.” In other words, they claimed to be relying on the original dating, even while they had re-dated the cores in a way that strongly influenced their results.

SkyHunter

“But Marcott re-dated a number of core tops and this created the uptick at the end of their graph.”

That is not true.

What is your source for that graph?

The uptick in the last datapoint is an artifact of cool proxies dropping out. Even though the Marcott’s method reduces the uptick, it is still greater than the instrumental record through 1940.

As for re-dating the core tops, let’s hear what the expert has to say.

richard telford | March 22, 2013 at 8:19 am |

The re-dating step was essential but not optimally implemented. It will have induced errors, mainly in the last century, rendering the already fragile uptick very doubtful. These errors in re-dating will not have had a material affect on the rest of the reconstruction, as such re-dating is an irrelevant diversion, a mud-throwing exercise.

These errors in re-dating will not have had a material affect on the rest of the reconstruction, as such re-dating is an irrelevant diversion, a mud-throwing exercise.

Telford is saying that the main part of the reconstruction is what we should focus on, not the modern proxies, since they are not robust anyway.

But the issue here is why Marcott went to the lengths he did in order to produce a result different from the result he got from the same data in his PhD thesis. He changed the data and then included it even though it was not reliable, just so he would be able to confirm Mann’s hockey blade. Why didn’t he just leave it out?

SkyHunter

I don’t know if that is true. I certainly wouldn’t make such a determination by comparing graphs of different scales and methodologies.

Or take the word of a denier. And even if it is true, it doesn’t change the empirical fact that CO2 is a climate forcing.

Swood1000

I certainly wouldn’t make such a determination by comparing graphs of different scales and methodologies.

Or take the word of a denier.

If you read all the comments on the page you will see some by Richard Telford. Although he did not go beyond saying:

It will have induced errors, mainly in the last century, rendering the already fragile uptick very doubtful.

neither did he find fault with McIntyre’s graph.

What is the issue of scales and methodologies that is relevant here? Marcott’s original graph using the same data did not go up at the end. He made changes that caused it to go up at the end and which rendered “the already fragile uptick very doubtful.”

And even if it is true…

If it is true would you say that it falls below the scientific standard of conduct that you would like to see?

SkyHunter

You don’t know why the two charts do not look the same, yet you suspect fraud.

Why are they different?

You thought it was because of re-dating the core tops, that turned out to be false. Now you are suggesting that because he refined his analysis, bringing it more in line with the instrumental record, that somehow constitutes breach of the scientific standard of conduct.

You don’t even know what changes were made or why.

You also did not acknowledge that you were wrong about re-dating the

This reveals a strong confirmation bias on your part.

Swood1000

You don’t know why the two charts do not look the same, yet you suspect fraud.

My assumption is that when the same person uses the same proxies for the same purpose he should get pretty much the same result. What is your assumption under these circumstances?

You thought it was because of re-dating the core tops, that turned out to be false.

I believe that turned out to be true.

he refined his analysis, bringing it more in line with the instrumental record

Well, at least you admit that he made results-oriented changes to his methodology. You have no problem with that?

You also did not acknowledge that you were wrong about re-dating the

What are you talking about? Your own source, Telford, talks about the “errors in re-dating.”

What exactly is my confirmation bias?

SkyHunter

You produced a chart from a denier website as evidence. I went to the authority, Telford, and he said the re-dating was necessary, but not implemented the way he would have done it. Regardless, the re-dating has a negligible impact on the overall reconstruction. Telford is an expert in paleoclimate proxies, and he is skeptical, yet realistic, of all proxy reconstructions.

I didn’t admit anything, I don’t know what the differences in the two charts are, other than the two obvious differences. And neither do you it appears, or I would guess you would tell me.

Your bias shows in how you interpret what Telford said.

Telford’s comment reflects my opinion. The whole bugaboo about the last century and re-dating core tops is a red-herring distraction designed to sow confusion and doubt.

In your case it has succeeded.

Swood1000

Marcott changed his method of analysis with the result having “a negligible impact on the overall reconstruction” as you put it. Except that suddenly we have a marked uptick at the end where there was not one before.

Should he show the uptick in the graph? There are no upticks like it elsewhere in the graph, implying that this one is unique. But the problem is that the rest of the graph is low-resolution and smoothed. As put by a co-author:

“We showed that no temperature variability is preserved in our reconstruction at cycles shorter than 300 years, 50% is preserved at 1000-year time scales, and nearly all is preserved at 2000-year periods and longer.”

and although you affirm that the current warming is of a type that would last longer than 300 years there is no evidence for that proposition. We have a high-resolution spike put in contrast with a low-resolution graph, the spike having been absent in a previous graph involving the same data, the spike having appeared as a consequence of a procedure incorrectly implemented according to Telford, who said

It will have induced errors, mainly in the last century, rendering the already fragile uptick very doubtful.

But Marcott, regardless of the fact that his newly-created uptick was “fragile,” that he was comparing high-resolution with low resolution, that the uptick was “very doubtful” as well as lacking in statistical significance, and that this all came about as a result of a procedure incorrectly implemented, went ahead and included it in the graph with nary a remark about it, knowing that the uptick itself would be the most prominent feature of the graph and would generate a huge amount of public notice, and knowing that it would be universally misinterpreted, which it was by the most learned and erudite journals.

And you suggest that anyone who questions the bona fides of the person bringing about this result must be biased?

I don’t know what the differences in the two charts are, other than the two obvious differences. And neither do you it appears, or I would guess you would tell me.

If someone produces such a different result from the same data, especially where the changes have a “negligible impact” on the statistically reliable portion of a graph and only operate to bring into being an unreliable and “very doubtful” yet quite inflammatory portion, the presumption has to be that the procedures were modified in order to bring about the changes that resulted.

SkyHunter

The uptick is consistent with the instrumental record. Any good scientist would question the results if they disagree with the evidence. If the core dates align the LIA with the 19th century in the proxy data, re-dating is necessary.

Why do you presume Marcott had nefarious intentions if you are not biased?

Why else would you assume what is not in evidence?

Swood1000

Why else would you assume what is not in evidence?

What am I assuming that is not in evidence?

The uptick is consistent with the instrumental record.

If a portion of a graph is fragile, very doubtful, unreliable, at a different resolution from the rest of the graph, and came into being only after incorrect procedural changes were implemented, should it be included?

SkyHunter

You are assuming that Marcott made changes from his thesis for nefarious purposes.

It was not a different resolution from the rest of the graph.

It was more robust after the changes.

Yes, since it is part of the reconstruction, it should have been included with caveats, which it was.

Swood1000

Yes, since it is part of the reconstruction, it should have been included with caveats, which it was.

What were the caveats? That earlier portions of the reconstruction were more robust?

It was not a different resolution from the rest of the graph.

But one of the authors said that “We showed that no temperature variability is preserved in our reconstruction at cycles shorter than 300 years…” So how can we see variability for a period shorter than 300 years?

It was more robust after the changes.

How about when we focus only on the uptick. Before the changes there was no uptick, so no question as to whether the uptick was robust. Was it more robust afterward?

adrianvance

This freak has mastered all the big words from reading the ingredients of his makeup jars. Just look at the hairdo. Best it smells like dead animal. Which is appropriate.

Swood1000

Why do you presume Marcott had nefarious intentions if you are not biased?

Suppose a scientist reported a finding that was described by acknowleged experts as fragile, very doubtful, unreliable, and the result of incorrect procedures. Would you say that any person who questions that work product must be biased?

SkyHunter

That is a mischaracterization.

Why are you obsessed with the insignificant part of the graph?

Swood1000

That is a mischaracterization.

With respect to the uptick?

Why are you obsessed with the insignificant part of the graph?

In the first place, if it was so insignificant then why was that aspect of it highlighted everyplace the study was reported?

In the second place, the first sentence of the abstract highlights the disparity between the earlier Holocene and the recent warming as the focus of the study.

“Surface temperature reconstructions of the past 1500 years suggest that recent warming is unprecedented in that time. Here we provide a broader perspective by reconstructing regional and global temperature anomalies for the past 11,300 years from 73 globally distributed records.”

So how can you say that the portion of the report dealing with the recent warming is insignificant?

SkyHunter

The hockey blade is confirmed by the instrumental record. You assume Marcott’s motivation was to confirm Mann. That assumption reveals your bias.

Swood1000

You assume Marcott’s motivation was to confirm Mann. That assumption reveals your bias.

What bias would that be?

SkyHunter

You believe Marcott is deliberately misleading, yet you have not been able to produce a single shred of evidence in support of that belief, and the evidence you thought confirmed it was determined to be false, you still cling to your established belief. Which is by definition biased.

It is ok to be biased, as long as you are cognizant of the fact. Otherwise, it cripples your objectivity and critical thinking skills.

Swood1000

yet you have not been able to produce a single shred of evidence in support of that belief

See the other comment I left a few minutes ago for a summary of my reasons for doubt.

and the evidence you thought confirmed it was determined to be false

Can you point out to me with specificity where this was determined to be false?

SkyHunter

See Telford’s comment.

Swood1000

Telford’s comment where?

SkyHunter

On open mind, where he described the whole issue as irrelevant nonsense.

Swood1000

Do you have a link to that?

Swood1000

and the evidence you thought confirmed it was determined to be false

The “evidence” was that he had re-dated. We had no explanation for that. Telford says that it was essential but because it was done improperly it rendered “the already fragile uptick very doubtful.” So the problem is still the re-dating. So what exactly was confirmed to be false?

Swood1000

Furthermore, scientific studies have different purposes. A person like Telford can see immediately that the 20th century portion is unreliable and therefore he ignores it. For those not as scientifically endowed, however, or for those who do not take the time to read the study carefully, it appears to be independent evidence for the stark character of recent warming. In that sense such a mischaracterization is not irrelevant since it can have a profound impact on public opinion and public policy.

So to an expert a misstatement that is trivial (because clearly false) is not necessarily trivial to all who receive that report, especially when all the most reputable journals report the misstatement as a profound and noteworthy finding.

SkyHunter

Telford said the re-dating of the core tops was necessary but not optimally implemented. He also said it is an irrelevant distraction.

The important thing about Marcott 2013 is that it shows the 20th century warming to be un precedented in 11,000 years.

You seem to believe that Shaun Marcott reworked his thesis to conform to the blade on “Mann’s Hockey Stick.” The blade is the instrumental record. Marcott if anything was motivated to match the instrumental record.

The 2000 year record looks like a hockey stick. Mann’s is not the only multi-proxy reconstruction.

Marcott extended that record for the entire Holocene. The work was original and a first of it’s kind. Nit picking about the last 100 years, which the authors clearly state is the weakest part of the reconstruction is nonsense.

Unless something changes with the data itself, I see nothing wrong with the reconstruction. If they had terminated it at 1850, there would have been no “uptick,” until you add the instrumental record.

If the best criticism is that the authors may have inadvertently made the least robust part of their reconstruction similar to the instrumental record. Then it will weather Steve McIntyre’s BS.

Did you see Tamino’s response when asked about that McIntyre’s chart?

[Response: If you avoid the real problem:, false fluctuations caused by proxy dropout (say, by using the differencing method), then there’s an uptick no matter which set of proxy ages you use.

If, on the other hand, you switch from recalibrated to originally published ages, and push data which is beyond 1940 back in time or maybe extend the reconstruction beyond 1940 (when there aren’t nearly enough proxies no matter how you slice it), and limit only to alkenones, and do whatever else you need to get what you want … then you can flood the internet with innuendo and sneering.]

Swood1000

The important thing about Marcott 2013 is that it shows the 20th century warming to be unprecedented in 11,000 years.

It doesn’t, because it compares low-resolution highly smoothed data with high-resolution unsmoothed data. Only if you presented the recent warming the same way it would have been presented if it had occurred as a part of the low-resolution data would there be a fair comparison. The graph gives the impression that there was no comparable warming earlier in the Holocene but the data just does not answer that question.

But like I said. There are high resolution proxies that extend through the Holocene, ice cores.

It has been affirmed by numerous experts that there is a minimum sampling resolution of 300 years. Are you denying this?

Nit picking about the last 100 years, which the authors clearly state is the weakest part of the reconstruction is nonsense.

The contrast between the last 100 years and the rest of the Holocene was the focus of the study and was deemed the most newsworthy aspect. It is not nit picking to find fault with the way the last 100 years was represented. Furthermore, the authors did not “clearly state” this. It was only discernable by someone having expertise in statistics and paleo reconstructions.

Did you see Tamino’s response when asked about that McIntyre’s chart?

What about Tamino’s statement that the changed procedures introduced “an artificial warming into the result”? You have no problem with that?

“Only if you presented the recent warming the same way it would have been presented if it had occurred as a part of the low-resolution data would there be a fair comparison.”

The graph is a product of the proxy data, most of which does not extend into the instrumental record.

“The graph gives the impression that there was no comparable warming earlier in the Holocene but the data just does not answer that question.”

True, the the data in the reconstruction does not confirm this beyond one sigma, but we don’t need to evaluate it as if it exists in a vacuum. The graph confirms what is already known, the 20th century warming is unprecedented in 11,000 years.

“”

“”

Swood1000

Where do they compare the different data?

You said:

The important thing about Marcott 2013 is that it shows the 20th century warming to be unprecedented in 11,000 years.

But the only way to show this, since the 20th century is less than 300 years, is by comparing low-resolution highly smoothed data (the Marcott data) with data having a much higher resolution, whether it’s the instrument record or unreliable recent proxies. Fig. 1A compared with the latter.

The graph is a product of the proxy data, most of which does not extend into the instrumental record.

Then the inherent limitations of the data from this study do now allow an explicit contrast with the recent warming. What’s wrong with that?

True, the the data in the reconstruction does not confirm this beyond one sigma, but we don’t need to evaluate it as if it exists in a vacuum. The graph confirms what is already known, the 20th century warming is unprecedented in 11,000 years.

Is this true or false: If the data from a study does not confirm the truth of X a scientist may not report that it does, even if data from other
studies supports this conclusion.

“”

Not clear what this was.

SkyHunter

I was still writing when I accidentally posted.

So you have a problem with the instrumental record?

Sounds like you are just wishing for something to be true because you want to believe it.

You can attack Marcott’s last century all you want, but if you want to show that their reconstruction does not confirm that the modern warming is unprecedented, then explain how the planet warmed and then cooled by 0.9C, without leaving any evidence in the paleoclimate record.

Otherwise, you are just another jackass trying to kick a hole in the barn.

Swood1000

Is this true or false: If the data from a study does not confirm the truth of X a scientist may not report that it does, even if data from other studies supports this conclusion.

Am I to conclude, then, that your answer to this is ‘false’?

SkyHunter

False. Science does not exist in a vacuum.

As long as the authors cite the supporting studies and data, which as far as I can tell, the authors did very well.

I am having a hard time understanding what your problem is. You seem to feel that Marcott et. al. is misleading.

Misleading is SM’s graph, deliberate obfuscation. Which is why you are now obsessed with irrelevant minutia. You fell victim to by SM’s deception.

adrianvance

Pay no attention to this freak-a-zoid. He is a notorious Internet stalker. Just look at his picture. He is apparently transgender.

Swood1000

False. Science does not exist in a vacuum.

Then may I quote you as follows:

“If the data from a study does not confirm the truth of X a scientist may nevertheless report that it does if data from other studies supports this conclusion.”

SkyHunter

As long as the supporting study is cited.

Swood1000

Let me just be clear. You are saying that if a scientist’s study failed to find X he may nevertheless report that it did find X, as long as he also sites a study that actually did find X?

SkyHunter

That is a hypothetical. Marcott makes no unfounded or unsourced claims.

Swood1000

No, I am asking if that is a correct statement of a principle to which you subscribe.

SkyHunter

No.

A study can cite the findings of another study. But it cannot claim said findings to be it’s own.

Swood1000

A study can cite the findings of another study. But it cannot claim said findings to be it’s own.

Then do you agree that if I assert that a scientist is to be faulted for falsely claiming to have shown through the use of reliable data that the modern warming is unprecedented, and you respond with other evidence that the modern warming actually is unprecedented, this does not respond to the assertion and is irrelevant with respect to the assertion?

I am having a hard time understanding what your problem is. You seem to feel that Marcott et. al. is misleading.

Slowly but surely we seem to be making progress in communicating our positions. Yes! That is what I am saying!

Swood1000

Let’s just go through my assertions and see where you stand on them. Do you agree with the following:

The uptick was fragile, very doubtful, and unreliable, but this was discernable only by those knowledgeable both in statistics and in paleo reconstructions who carefully read the study.

SkyHunter

Yes. But since that was the target demographic, I see no problem with it.

Swood1000

OK. Making some progress. Do you agree with this:

The uptick came into being only after incorrect procedural changes were implemented, causing the introduction of an artificial warming that was just an artifact of the averaging process.

SkyHunter

No,the uptick is a result of proxy drop off.

The procedure used to re-date the core tops was not optimal according to an independent expert, but that doesn’t mean it was incorrect. The induced errorsx according to the same expert, were inconsequential.

Swood1000

No,the uptick is a result of proxy drop off.

Do you disagree with that part of the sentence that is almost a direct quote from Tamino:

“Note that the proxy which drops out in 1800 is the coolest of the three at that time. Hence when it stops, the average of what remains is artificially high after that time. This causes an “uptick” which is just an artifact of the averaging process.”http://tamino.wordpress.com/2013/03/22/the-tick/

The part of the sentence being:

“causing the introduction of an artificial warming that was just an artifact of the averaging process.”

The procedure used to re-date the core tops was not optimal according to an independent expert, but that doesn’t mean it was incorrect.

Do you reject the assertion by Telford that the “re-dating step…will have induced errors” or do you reject the proposition that errors are incorrect?

The induced errors according to the same expert, were inconsequential.

This was not a part of the sentence I asked you to agree or disagree with, although you are welcome to agree with the sentence on the understanding that you consider the uptick to be inconsequential.

SkyHunter

I agree with Tamino. The uptick is an artifact of proxy dropout and the averaging process. I also agree with this statement.

“The fact is that the uptick in temperature at the end of the reconstruction period is a real feature of the proxy data used in this study. While the size of that uptick is inflated in the “Standard 5×5″ reconstruction, it’s still there and it’s still real. The only real mystery is why the hell anyone should be surprised or disturbed about this. After all, we already know what happened in the 20th century.”

SkyHunter

No I don’t reject Telford’s assertion that the re-dating had induced errors. I also agree that the re-dating was necessary and that the induced errors were less than the errors before re-dating.

SkyHunter

That is the crux of the biscuit. All proxy reconstructions have induced errors. Telford intimates that there was a better way of calibrating the data, but he doesn’t elaborate, so it is just his opinion. An expert opinion, but an opinion none the less. Without evidence to back it up, it is still only an opinion.

Which is why this whole exercise of accusing Marcott of fraud and misconduct is a red herring.

Swood1000

All proxy reconstructions have induced errors.

I am using the term “error” to refer to a result other than the one that would have been achieved if the most appropriate known procedures had been implemented. Under that meaning of “error” do you believe that all proxy reconstructions have induced errors?

SkyHunter

You are assuming something not in evidence. No one has demonstrated that the best known procedure was not implemented. Telford suggests there is a better procedure, but he does not describe it, so we have no way of knowing. He also states that it is a distraction since it does not alter the results in any significant way.

All reconstructions, proxy or otherwise have induced errors. Which is why statistics applies the three sigma rule.

Swood1000

I am making a distinction between (a) imprecision inherent in scientific inquiry, especially when trying to formulate conclusions based on proxies, and (b) unnecessary imprecision caused by inappropriate procedures, which I refer to as “errors.” I am not assuming anything. I am simply asking if you believe that all proxy reconstructions have induced errors?

SkyHunter

What inappropriate procedures?

Swood1000

What inappropriate procedures?

I am not assuming anything. I am simply asking if you believe that all proxy reconstructions have induced errors?

Swood1000

According to Tamino the appropriate procedures would have resulted in the red line shown in this graph. Do you agree that this is what Tamino is saying?

Well that was Tamino’s suggestion as a way to minimize proxy drop-out. It certainly matches the instrumental record better. And since Tamino’s blog is in the public domain, everyone has the chance to learn a little bit about statistics and climate proxies.

But the important message that Tamino emphasized in his first post on the subject is this:

Swood1000

So do you agree that Tamino believes that the use of incorrect procedures resulted in an uptick significantly larger than it should have been, although he believes that this had no significant impact on the entire reconstruction?

SkyHunter

Tamino does not characterize the procedure as incorrect. Just like he doesn’t consider his suggestion to be the correct procedure. The important thing is what information does it impart. In that context, this paper confirms what was already generally believed, the modern warming is unprecedented in the Holocene.

Swood1000

Tamino does not characterize the procedure as incorrect.

Well he said that the procedures used left the uptick artificially high and he proposed a procedure that would, to the extent possible, remove that issue, right? But nevertheless you believe that this does not characterize the procedures used as incorrect?

SkyHunter

Correct and incorrect are absolute terms that don’t apply to relative subjects.

Swood1000

How about “done using inferior procedures”?

SkyHunter

I don’t think it matters, they were not trying to reproduce the modern temperature record, so the fact that they failed is irrelevant, they achieved what they set out to do.

Swood1000

I don’t think it matters, they were not trying to reproduce the modern temperature record

But they did reproduce the modern record, so they must have been trying to do so. Irrespective of the importance you place on the modern period relative to the remainder of the reconstruction, would you agree with Tamino and with Telford that the reconstruction for the modern period was completed using inferior procedures?

SkyHunter

No they didn’t, the modern record was a single datapoint at the end of the reconstruction. I believe T&T’s criticisms have merit. I don’t agree that those criticisms are an indictment.

Swood1000

A single data point is nevertheless a data point.

The criticism of Tamino and of Telford that I am referring to is related to the uptick and is far from an indictment of the entire reconstruction. Rather, it is a simple criticism of a portion of the reconstruction that they both feel is irrelevant to the rest of the reconstruction. You have agreed that the T&T criticism is that the uptick was produced through inferior procedures. Do you disagree with the criticism; i.e. do you believe that the uptick was not the result of inferior procedures?

SkyHunter

The uptick is real, it is just amplified by proxy drop-out. Tamino showed a different method (differencing) that is less effected by proxy drop-out. Telford suggested there may be a better way to re-data the core tops, but I have not seen his suggested alternative. The re-dating is not the reason for the uptick, though it may have influenced it.

My point, shared by both Tamino and Telford is; the whole discussion is red herring, a deliberate obfuscation intended to cast doubt where none exists.

Swood1000

Is this a true statement?

The uptick was significantly overestimated as a result of inferior procedures which caused the introduction of an artificial warming that was just an artifact of the averaging process.

SkyHunter

The procedures have not been shown to be inferior. The effect they would have on the rest of the reconstruction has not been determined.

Since Marcott et. al. analyzed the data many different ways, including RegEm, there are multiple cross checks for robustness. Now we have another methodology using the same data from Tamino, that dampens the uptick, but also changes the entire reconstruction to a minor degree.

Since the Holocene is the focus of the study, not the 20th century, it has not been determined that their methodology is inferior to Tamino’s.

Swood1000

Is it your position that it may have been impossible for Marcott to produce a report, no part of which introduced an artificial warming that was just an artifact of the averaging process?

Swood1000

Is it your position that if a portion of a graph was fragile, very doubtful, unreliable, and which introduced an artificial warming, that it is better to include that portion of the report than to exclude it?

Swood1000

As you know, if one takes a period of time, as in the first graph below, and smooths this out from a monthly resolution to an annual resolution, as in the second graph below, it pulls the highs and lows closer to the center. Although the two graphs represent the same data, the different resolution makes it appear as if the temperature did not vary as much.

The third graph below is Figure S4a from the Marcott Supplementary Materials. The uptick starts at about 1900, shown by the green line, and the blue line ends at 1950, so showing a 0.8C rise in 50 years (an issue for another discusson).

Now, for the earlier part of the graph we know from Marcott that “there is no statistically valid resolution to the combined proxy set for anything less than 300-year periods.” In fact, the paper said “…our temperature stack does not fully resolve variability at periods shorter than 2000 years…”

Since the earlier part of the graph is resolved and smoothed to this extent one would of course expect that 20th century portion of the graph would be smoothed equally, to avoid the problem shown above when comparing the monthly to the annual resolution graph. Unfortunately, with only 50 years to deal with it is problematic to use 300 year smoothing. The next graph shows the temp data from 1875-1975 with 50 year smoothing. The smoothing has reduced the increase to about 0.25C. How did Marcott get a rise of 0.8C? The next graph below shows the rise from 1900 using 20 year smoothing! This is how he was able to get a rise of 0.8C. In the words of the study:

“We chose a 20-year time step in part to facilitate comparison with 91 the high-resolution temperature reconstructions of the past millennium.”

The next image shows what the rise would look like at 100 year resolution, an 0.11C increase, and even that is too much for the rest of the graph, which is at 300 year resolution. The final image shows what Figure S4a would look like with the uptick represented at 100 year resolution.

Do you think that this is an appropriate way to represent the uptick when the purpose of the study was to compare the current warming with other warming in the Holocene?

SkyHunter

The annual fluctuation in temperature at proxy sites does not reflect the GMST. The GMST over short time periods does not reflect global heat content, which is the most accurate measure of global warming. The variation in GMST month to month, or year to year, is noise. The GMST is averaged over 30 years in order to get a statistically significant signal from the this noise.

The purpose of the study was not to show an uptick, but the resolve the Earth’s average temperature over the Holocene. The uptick at the end is the least robust and least interesting part of the study. However, it is the only thing that SM and the rest of the deniersphere could find wrong so that they can continue their denial of science propaganda.

Swood1000

No, the question is this: if two parts of a graph are to be compared with each other, shouldn’t they, to the extent possible, be depicted using the same data resolution?

Swood1000

Who is SM?

SkyHunter

Steve McIntyre.

Swood1000

Do you think that I am Steve McIntyre?

SkyHunter

No. But you are getting your argument from the specious nonsense he writes on his blog.

Gary Slabaugh

It doesn’t matter who you are, does it? A logical argument is supported by its own merit and its freedom from logical fallacy – both formal and informal; not by an appeal to authority. I wish that I knew a lot more about making a sound and meritorious argument from the perspective of fuzzy logic.
You two keeping to a nuanced scientific discussion, no matter your legal identities in real life, has been and continues to be a great read.
I’m interested very much in the motivated reasoning and cognitive biases (although it may be concealed in the secret and hidden recesses of the psyche) associated with the differences between genuine investigation and the pseudo-skepticism which goes on in order to confirm denial bias… along with other forms of motivated reasoning. It’s difficult to discern. As with other scientific pursuits, this form of cognitive science or epistemics (defined as the use of logic, philosophy, psychology, and linguistics to study knowledge and the way it is processed by humans) has the good rule… if there is insufficient evidence, then the proper course is to reserve judgement.

But I’m glad of the long discussion about Mann et al and Marcott and the hockey stick graph.

But please address the question: is it appropriate to append a high-res graph onto a low-res graph when the point of the study is to draw a contrast between low-res portion and the high-res portion?

SkyHunter

I don’t know what you are talking about. They did not append a high res graph with a low res graph. The aligned their reconstruction with a higher resolution reconstruction. To do so, they processed the data in 20yr time steps. They were completely open about their methodology and results.

This horse is dead, rotting, and starting to smell.

Why do you keep beating it?

Swood1000

This horse is dead, rotting, and starting to smell.

Why do you keep beating it?

Because we don’t seem to even be able to agree on facts that that should not be in dispute.

The aligned their reconstruction with a higher resolution reconstruction.

The reconstruction for the recent period was being aligned with a lower resolution reconstruction. Higher res proxies went into its reconstruction but “there is no statistically valid resolution to the combined proxy set for anything less than 300-year periods.”

In fact, Robert Rohde explicitly points out “the trap of comparing a single year or decade to what is essentially an average of centuries.”:

“This amount of variance suppression is roughly what you would expect if the underlying annual temperature time series had been smoothed with a 400-year moving average. In essence, their reconstruction appears to tell us about past changes in climate with a resolution of about 400 years. That is more than adequate for gathering insights about millennial scale changes during the last 10,000 years, but it will completely obscure any rapid fluctuations having durations less than a few hundred years. The only time such obscuring might not occur is during the very recent period when dating uncertainty is likely to be low and sample spacing may be very tight.

“Because the analysis method and sparse data used in this study will tend to blur out most century-scale changes, we can’t use the analysis of Marcott et al. to draw any firm conclusions about how unique the rapid changes of the twentieth century are compared to the previous 10,000 years. The 20th century may have had uniquely rapid warming, but we would need higher resolution data to draw that conclusion with any certainty. Similarly, one should be careful in comparing recent decades to early parts of their reconstruction, as one can easily fall into the trap of comparing a single year or decade to what is essentially an average of centuries.” http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/07/scientists-find-an-abrupt-warm-jog-after-a-very-long-cooling/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

Don’t you think that Marcott was inviting such a comparison?

SkyHunter

The nature of the reconstruction was to combine multiple proxy types and resolutions into a reconstruction of the Holocene. The proxies had at least 6500 year span, including the period 4500 – 5500 B.P. The length of the series and calibration over the the mid-Holocene, makes the reconstruction robust over this period. It also calibrates the long spanning low resolution proxies that extend to 1950 with higher resolution proxies that are only a few thousands of years old. By aligning their reconstruction with Mann’s 2000 year reconstruction, they aligned the mean with the 1961 – 1990 mean. Keeping it all consistent.

The dome C core in Antarctica has a 20 year or better resolution throughout the entire Holocene. What Marcott did was look at a 1000 different random and perturbed possibilities and plotted the average to one sigma.

Global climate change is not a few warm or cold years. The climate system has an enormous amount of inertia. It takes a long time for oceans to warm and cool, usually centuries, so marine proxies are good as low resolution proxies since what they are measuring only changes over centuries.

A warming of the Pacific of 0.18ºC in the last 50 years is 15 times faster than anything seen in the last 10,000 years.

This warming however is consistent with what physics predicts. The surface energy budget is what determines the climate. The oceans are ~93% of the thermal mass in the equation. They do not warm and cool rapidly, it takes a sustained forcing over very long time periods.

A few warm decades regionally, even if part of a global signal, which is what the Marcott reconstruction was designed to detect, is not going warm the oceans 0.18ºC, that normally takes centuries. Only a sustained forcing can perturb the surface energy budget enough to warm the the oceans that much.

The known CO2 forcing accounts for the heat that has gone into the oceans over the past 50 years. Nothing else explains it. This global multi-proxy reconstruction captures the mean global temperature over the entire Holocene, which includes the oceans. There is no known forcing that could put this much heat into the oceans, and no evidence that the oceans ever warmed this fast during the Holocene. This is consistent with known physics. No surprise that the 20th century warming is unprecedented. We can measure the radiative imbalance at the top of the atmosphere. We can look down through the atmosphere and see the missing light being absorbed.

If CO2 does not do, what we have observed it doing since 1860…then there is no plausible physical explanation for past or present climate.

There is nothing functionally wrong with Marcott’s reconstruction. It aligns with the last 2000 years, which aligns with the last 160, each of higher and higher resolution. The important thing is not whether it captures short term variability, but that it captures the long term mean. Which is the actual signal of global warming.

The issue I am trying to address right now, however, is the depiction of the last 100 years in high resolution while on the same graph the rest of the Holecene is depicted in low resolution. As the 1950 – 1970 graph showed above, the temperature reached .2 in the higher res while the same temperature was depicted as 0 in the low-res version.

Do you agree that it is inherently misleading to tack a high-res graph onto a low-res graph, knowing that the same temperature will appear to be higher in the high-res portion, especially where the focus of the graph is to contrast the temperatures in the two part of the graph?

The 20th century part of the graph was being contrasted with the earlier part of that graph, not with the Mann graph. And if the 20th century portion was given a higher res in order to make it comparable to a Mann graph in higher res, why is it appropriate to juxtapose those with a graph having a much lower resolution, for the purpose of graphically showing the difference in temperature?

SkyHunter

The 20th century resolution is the same as the rest of the reconstruction. They did not tack on another graph, they contrasted it with higher resolution reconstructions.

Swood1000

The 20th century resolution is the same as the rest of the reconstruction.

But what do you mean when “there is no statistically valid resolution to the combined proxy set for anything less than 300-year periods” and “In essence, their reconstruction appears to tell us about past changes in climate with a resolution of about 400 years.”

SkyHunter

The lowest resolution proxy was 300 years, therefore the combined resolution is 300 years. The data was still processed in 20 year steps, to align with Mann08, but the combined resolution of all the proxies is 300 years, and the combined proxies only cover less than 6500 years,during the mid-Holocene, not the beginning or the end.

Their methodology calibrates long spanning, low resolution proxy data with the higher resolution data in mann08, which is in turn calibrated with the even higher resolution instrumental record.

Swood1000

OK, but if “In essence, their reconstruction appears to tell us about past changes in climate with a resolution of about 400 years” then is it appropriate to juxtapose that with a graph having a resolution of 20 years?

SkyHunter

As long as it is well calibrated, which they took pains to do, hence the 20 year time steps in the processing.

Here is an example of the monthly mean using woodfortrees, smoothed over 5 years, 20 years, and 50 years.

Figure 1A and B show how their low resolution graph aligns with Mann’s higher resolution graph.

They did not change the resolution, they processed the data at a higher resolution in order to extract a more robust global mean average. You can see clearly in Figure 1A that the 2000 year reconstruction has the higher resolution variability

Swood1000

The 20th century part of the graph was being contrasted with the earlier part of that graph, not with the Mann graph. And if the 20th century portion was given a higher res in order to make it comparable to a Mann graph in higher res, why is it appropriate to juxtapose those with a graph having a much lower resolution, for the purpose of graphically showing the difference in temperature?

You are not addressing my question directly. You know what the question is. Perhaps you are wondering when I will tire of asking it.

The hockey stick shaft was displayed in low resolution and the blade was displayed in high resolution, which exaggerated the height of the blade relative to the shaft. Why is this appropriate when the purpose of the paper was to contrast the height of the blade with the flatness of the shaft?

They did not change the resolution, they processed the data at a higher resolution in order to extract a more robust global mean average.

Granted, a higher resolution is more accurate, but the primary purpose of the paper was the contrast between the recent warming and earlier warming. Therefore, greater accuracy resulted in being more misleading, and misleading about the very purpose of the study. Do you disagree?

SkyHunter

“The hockey stick shaft was displayed in low resolution and the blade was displayed in high resolution, which exaggerated the height of the blade relative to the shaft.”

That did not happen. Here is the procedure.

3. Monte-Carlo-Based Procedure

We used a Monte-Carlo-based procedure to construct 1000 realizations of our global temperature stack. This procedure was done in several steps:

1) We perturbed the proxy temperatures for each of the 73 datasets 1000 times (see Section 2) (Fig. S2a).

2) We then perturbed the age models for each of the 73 records (see Section 2), also 1000 times (Fig. S2a).

3) The first of the perturbed temperature records was then linearly interpolated onto the first of the perturbed age-models at 20 year resolution, and this was continued sequentially to form 1000 realizations of each time series that incorporated both temperature and age uncertainties (Fig. S2a). While the median resolution of the 73 datasets is 120 years, coarser time steps yield essentially identical results (see below), likely because age-model uncertainties are generally larger than the time step, and so effectively smooth high-frequency variability in the Monte Carlo simulations. We chose a 20-year time step in part to facilitate comparison with the high-resolution temperature reconstructions of the past millennium.

4) The records were then converted into anomalies from the average temperature for 4500-5500 yrs BP in each record, which is the common period of overlap for all records.

5) The records were then stacked together by averaging the first realization of each of the 73 records, and then the second realization of each, then the third, the fourth, and so on to form 1000 realizations of the global temperature stack (Fig.S2 b,c and Fig. S3).

6) The mean temperature and standard deviation were then taken from the 1000 simulations of the global temperature stack (Fig. S2d), and aligned with Mann et al. (2) over the interval 510-1450 yr BP (i.e. 500-1440 AD/CE), adjusting the mean, but not the variance. Mann et al. (2) reported anomalies relative to the CE 1961-1990 average; our final reconstructions are therefore effectively anomalies relative to same reference interval.

All the data was interpolated into a 20 year depth model, not just the last 2000 years, or the 20th century.

Swood1000

“In essence, their reconstruction appears to tell us about past changes in climate with a resolution of about 400 years”

Do you agree with this description of the hockey stick “shaft”?

SkyHunter

The hockey stick shaft is the past 2000 years, and there are multiple high resolution reconstructions of that period.

I don’t know how that conclusion was reached for the Marcott reconstruction, 300 years is the lowest resolution of the proxies, 20 years is the highest, and 120 is the mean resolution.

Swood1000

I don’t know how that conclusion was reached for the Marcott reconstruction

Do you respect the expertise of Robert Rohde who made that statement?:

“This amount of variance suppression is roughly what you would expect if the underlying annual temperature time series had been smoothed with a 400-year moving average. In essence, their reconstruction appears to tell us about past changes in climate with a resolution of about 400 years. That is more than adequate for gathering insights about millennial scale changes during the last 10,000 years, but it will completely obscure any rapid fluctuations having durations less than a few hundred years. The only time such obscuring might not occur is during the very recent period when dating uncertainty is likely to be low and sample spacing may be very tight.

“Because the analysis method and sparse data used in this study will tend to blur out most century-scale changes, we can’t use the analysis of Marcott et al. to draw any firm conclusions about how unique the rapid changes of the twentieth century are compared to the previous 10,000 years. The 20th century may have had uniquely rapid warming, but we would need higher resolution data to draw that conclusion with any certainty. Similarly, one should be careful in comparing recent decades to early parts of their reconstruction, as one can easily fall into the trap of comparing a single year or decade to what is essentially an average of centuries.” http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/07/scientists-find-an-abrupt-warm-jog-after-a-very-long-cooling/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

SkyHunter

Yes, I respect the expertise of Robert Rohde.

He made that statement before he had read the supplemental materials. So it is was not an informed opinion. He was estimating the resolution, not empirically deriving it. So the 400 years is a close guess, but the actual smoothing is 300 years.

I agree that one cannot draw such a conclusion from the data itself and at one sigma, uncertainty, Marcott 2013 certainly does not do that.

However, when you also consider the physics, there is nothing surprising about the results. For a planet to warm and cool rapidly, there would be;

a) evidence of a strong forcing in the geologic record
b) evidence that transient climate sensitivity is being underestimated.

There is no evidence for a century long solar forcing, followed by a volcanic induced cooling. So the only other possibility would be higher transient climate sensitivity, which would mean that equilibrium sensitivity would also be higher. That would not be good news.

He made that statement before he had read the supplemental materials. So it is was not an informed opinion.

What is your source for that?

Would you agree that the reconstruction appears to tell us about past changes in climate with a resolution of no less than 300 years, and that this describes the hockey stick shaft?

SkyHunter

The same email where he made that statement.

“I found the Marcott et al. paper interesting and read it with some care. There are many details, such as proxy data locations and the exact method of averaging, that are not presented in the main text of the paper. In all likelihood many of these factors are discussed in the supplemental material, but since I don’t have access to that I can only comment on the parts that I can immediately see.”

He made that statement before he had read the supplemental materials. So it is was not an informed opinion.

Are you saying that the information in the study itself is insufficient to allow one to arrive at an informed opinion?

SkyHunter

He qualified his opinion as being uninformed.

I have no idea it he has commented further. It is not of particular interest to me.

Swood1000

Would you agree that the Marcott reconstruction appears to tell us about past changes in climate with a resolution of no less than 300 years, and that this describes the hockey stick shaft?

SkyHunter

Yes. My understanding is that the reconstruction is smoothed over 300 years. A 300 year resolution smoothes out short term variability. Marcott had data up to 1950, so 1800 was the last fully resolved point.

The short term variability is removed and a trend emerges. If the trend is zero over 300 years, then it is also highly likely that there was not a great deal of variation, since an extreme anomaly must be countered by an equally extreme reverse anomaly. That means that a warming anomaly of 0.9ºC in 100 years would need to be offset by a cooling anomaly of -1.8ºC over the next 200 years. Such heat fluxes and associated forcings would be abundantly evident in the higher resolution proxies, especially the ice cores.

Swood1000

an extreme anomaly must be countered by an equally extreme reverse anomaly

But the purpose of a study is to tell us something besides “go look at the other studies.” The data from this study is unable to tell us whether such anomalies took place, with a single exception. The blade alone had the ability to show such anomalies.

Since the focus of the graph was to contrast the shaft with the blade is it not misleading for the blade alone to be able to show such anomalies, and to use the same line for both with no demarcation as to the separate treatments?

SkyHunter

The blade is clearly Mann’s reconstruction and labeled as such. The proxy drop-out is also clearly illustrated in Figure 1.

I agree with your point that the uptick was not robust, as they clearly show in the figure 1, and had they left it out, Steve McIntyre would have had to work harder to earn his money, but it makes no difference in to the conclusion.

It would be near impossible to hide a 100 year warming event of this magnitude in the geologic record. Marcott 2013 was the first reconstruction of it’s kind, others will follow. It shows the modern warming is unprecedented in 11,000 years to one sigma certainty.

Swood1000

The blade is clearly Mann’s reconstruction and labeled as such.

The purple line is not Mann’s reconstruction, is it?

I agree with your point that the uptick was not robust,

That is not my point. My point is that the uptick is misleading.

It would be near impossible to hide a 100 year warming event of this magnitude

The issue is that Marcott purported to demonstrate from the flatness of his shaft that there were no anomalies similar to the current one but the resolution of his data does not allow that inference to be drawn. The fact that other or future studies may show that there were no such anomalies is not pertinent to this study.

Since the focus of the graph was to contrast the shaft with the blade is it not misleading for the blade alone to be able to show such anomalies, and to use the same line for both with no demarcation as to the separate treatments?

SkyHunter

“The issue is that Marcott purported to demonstrate from the flatness of his shaft that there were no anomalies similar to the current one but the resolution of his data does not allow that inference to be drawn.”</I

No, the comparison was made with Mann08, the uptick in their reconstruction is clearly not consistent with Mann08. And they clearly do not overstate the confidence. That is your bias. When I saw the uptick out of sync with the instrumental record, I knew immediately it was an artifact and dismissed it as irrelevant, that is my bias.

After discussing it with you, I now agree with Telford, they should have ended the mean and variance in 1800, and let the lower resolution Mann08 demonstrate uptick. Then SM would have extended the reconstruction to take end of the data, and would be spinning the narrative that the inability to reproduce the blade falsifies both.

Swood1000

So you are saying that they should not have included the uptick but that doing so was not misleading?

No, the comparison was made with Mann08,

The purple line of the “blade” was compared with the purple line of the “shaft,” right?

And they clearly do not overstate the confidence. That is your bias.

Well, using non-robust proxies is overstating the confidence, but it is the showing of the blade in a higher resolution that is the misleading aspect. Could you address that?

they should have ended the mean and variance in 1800, and let the lower resolution Mann08 demonstrate uptick

How is it appropriate to contrast a line incapable of showing a 100 year anomaly with one that is capable?

SkyHunter

They do not show the blade in a higher resolution. You are mistaken.

The purple line is capable of showing a 100 year anomaly of this magnitude.

Here is the same ratio of smoothing from Mann to Marcott, using the instrumental record.

The purple line is capable of showing a 100 year anomaly of this magnitude.

Except that if that anomaly had been scaled even with 100yr smoothing (much less the 300yr of the shaft) it would have looked like the red line in this graphic, right?

SkyHunter

It looks like what one would expect for a 100yr smoothing on a data set that ends in 1950.

Swood1000

It looks like what one would expect for a 100yr smoothing on a data set that ends in 1950.

Then why shouldn’t it be shown that way, since that shows it in the same context as the rest of the line?

SkyHunter

Because that is not what their process yielded. that would have been dishonest. Instead they showed the uptick from their results, as well as how it contrasted with and was not consistent with Mann08 and the instrumental record. As a result of publishing it, even though it was an obvious artifact, it was openly discussed and is now well understood.

At least, I understand why it is, and why it is not important.

Swood1000

Because that is not what their process yielded. that would have been dishonest.

What do you think is the relative importance of using the same scale on all the data making up a line? Suppose that one section in the middle of the “shaft” came from a series of high resolution proxies. And suppose that the temperatures shown by those proxies were exactly the same as the temperatures of the low resolution proxies on either side of it. Since that is what “their process yielded” would it be appropriate to show that one section in the original resolution if the result would cause the line to bulge significantly upward just in that section?

SkyHunter

They used the same scale throughout their reconstruction.

Why do you keep insisting they changed it?

Swood1000

What is your answer to my hypothetical?

SkyHunter

Not answering hypotheticals.

Why do you insist they changed the scale of their reconstruction?

Swood1000

Not answering hypotheticals.

I’m asking for a statement of principle. Should the resolution of data in a graph be normalized so that actual temperature X in one part of the graph will not appear to be higher or lower than the same temperature in another part of the same graph?

SkyHunter

I don’t know what you mean by “normalized.”

Swood1000

Adjusting values measured on different scales to a notionally common scale.

SkyHunter

How would one do that?

What is the methodology and reasoning behind it?

Swood1000

In another usage in statistics, normalization refers to the creation of shifted and scaled versions of statistics, where the intention is that these normalized values allow the comparison of corresponding normalized values for different datasets in a way that eliminates the effects of certain gross influences, as in an anomaly time series. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_(statistics)

How else can data with differing resolutions be meaningfully displayed on the same graph?

SkyHunter

What problem do you have with how Marcott normalized the data?

The line on the graph is not an artifact of the normalization process.

Swood1000

I’m asking for a statement of principle. Should the resolution of data in a graph be normalized so that actual temperature X in one part of the graph will not appear to be higher or lower than the same temperature in another part of the same graph?

SkyHunter

Of course, but that has nothing to do with the uptick.

Swood1000

Of course, but that has nothing to do with the uptick.

But doesn’t actual temperature X in the uptick appear to be higher than the same temperature in the “shaft”?

SkyHunter

As has been explained ad nauseam, the uptick is amplified by proxy drop-out. It has nothing to do with normalizing the data.

Swood1000

As has been explained ad nauseam, the uptick is amplified by proxy drop-out. It has nothing to do with normalizing the data.

But the uptick is at 20yr resolution, which makes an anomaly in the uptick in the amount of X appear larger than the same size anomaly in the shaft, right?

And if we took steps to give the uptick the same resolution as the shaft, by giving it 100 year resolution it would appear like the red line here, right?

SkyHunter

The uptick is not a 20year resolution, it is the same scale and resolution as the rest of the chart.

Swood1000

I thought Marcott said that he had used 20 year resolution on the “blade.” Are we talking about the same thing?

SkyHunter

No, they applied a 20 year resolution to the entire series when they analyzed it.

3. Monte-Carlo-Based Procedure

We used a Monte-Carlo-based procedure to construct 1000 realizations of our global temperature stack. This procedure was done in several steps:

1) We perturbed the proxy temperatures for each of the 73 datasets 1000 times (see Section 2) (Fig. S2a).

2) We then perturbed the age models for each of the 73 records (see Section 2), also 1000 times (Fig. S2a).

3) The first of the perturbed temperature records was then linearly interpolated onto the first of the perturbed age-models at 20 year resolution, and this was continued sequentially to form 1000 realizations of each time series that incorporated both temperature and age uncertainties (Fig. S2a). While the median resolution of the 73 datasets is 120 years, coarser time steps yield essentially identical results (see below), likely because age-model uncertainties are generally larger than the time step, and so effectively smooth high-frequency variability in the Monte Carlo simulations. We chose a 20-year time step in part to facilitate comparison with the high-resolution temperature reconstructions of the past millennium.

4) The records were then converted into anomalies from the average temperature for 4500-5500 yrs BP in each record, which is the common period of overlap for all records.

Look at figure S2. This is describing step a in the analysis process. They did not change the scale, they just left the artifact, without explaining it, other than to say it was not robust.

Swood1000

They did not change the scale, they just left the artifact, without explaining it, other than to say it was not robust.

They did not say it was not robust. They said it was less robust than what came from the earlier proxies.

they applied a 20 year resolution to the entire series when they analyzed it.

I am talking about the resolution used in displaying it.

You agreed that actual temperature X in one part of the graph should not appear to be higher or lower than the same temperature in another part of the same graph. But if the high point of the blade had been a point in the shaft it would not have risen as high because the data in the shaft is effectively at 300 year resolution while the data in the blade is effectively at 20 year resolution. (I am feeling a sense of déjà vu.)

SkyHunter

The blade in Mann08 is at a 20 year resolution, which is why you see more variability than Marcott.

The resolution of the purple line is 300 years.

Swood1000

The resolution of the purple line is 300 years.

The portion of the purple line after 1900 is displayed at 20 year resolution.

SkyHunter

No it isn’t.

Swood1000

Then how are we seeing such a dramatic rise after 1900 whereas the same 50 year 0.8C anomaly, occurring on a line having a resolution of 300 years, would be barely visible, if at all?

SkyHunter

Because proxy drop-out, which began hundreds of YBP, has introduced a warm bias. A bias that is exaggerated in the last data point.

Swood1000

By the “last data point” are you referring to this:

The EPICA core sample centered in 1895 was 3.04ºC above the mean for the last 1000 years, the highest anomaly recorded in the last 11,000. That is one of the proxies that spans the entire Holocene with a 20 year resolution.

So the uptick, caused by that one proxy, is displayed with 20 year resolution?

SkyHunter

No, it is displayed at 300 year resolution, but each 20 year time step is actual data, not infilled, which gives it more weight.

“The only time such obscuring might not occur is during the very recent period when dating uncertainty is likely to be low and sample spacing may be very tight.”

Swood1000

“The only time such obscuring might not occur is during the very recent period when dating uncertainty is likely to be low and sample spacing may be very tight.”

This brings to mind a comment I saw on one blog:

“Marcott performed 1000 “perturbations” on the raw data, which permutated each datum 1000x time-wise within the age-uncertainty of that datum. But Marcott set the age-uncertainty of the 1940 bin to zero. Therefore the 1940 bin is protected from the homogenization which affects all other bins, so its uptick is protected.”

So this is how he did it?

SkyHunter

I don’t know if that would do it, but I could understand setting the age uncertainty to zero for 1940.

Do you agree with Rohde that comparing the “blade” to the “shaft” is misleading and is a “trap”?

SkyHunter

It would be misleading if it were not in the same resolution as the past 1500 years.

Swood1000

Do you agree that comparing recent decades to early parts of their reconstruction leaves one exposed to the trap of comparing a single year or decade to what is essentially an average of centuries?

SkyHunter

Only if one is ignorant of statistical analysis, not a very common condition for the readers. Science Magazine.

Swood1000

Would you characterize the writers of this piece as being ignorant of statistical analysis?

“Marcott’s graph shows temperatures rising slowly after the ice age, until they peaked 9500 years ago. The total rise over that period was about 0.6 °C. They then held steady until around 5500 years ago, when they began slowly falling again until around 1850. The drop was 0.7 °C, roughly reversing the previous rise.

The study has produced the first extension of the notorious “hockey stick” temperature graph all the way back to the end of the last ice age.

It suggests that we are not quite out of the natural range of temperature variation yet, but will be by the end of the century.

Swood1000

“Then, in the late 19th century, the graph shows temperatures shooting up…”

This compares a single year or decade to what is essentially an average of centuries, does it not?

SkyHunter

No.

Swood1000

“Then, in the late 19th century, the graph shows temperatures shooting up…”

The temperatures started shooting up from where?

Swood1000

Are the writers of this piece ignorant of statistical analysis?

“After the ice age, they found, global average temperatures rose until they reached a plateau between 7550 and 3550 bc. Then a long-term cooling trend set in, reaching its lowest temperature extreme between ad 1450 and 1850.

That is what Marcott shows by comparing and contrasting their reconstruction with the various 2000 year reconstructions.

Swood1000

That is what Marcott shows by comparing and contrasting their reconstruction with the various 2000 year reconstructions.

No, the reference to the modern warming was not to a contrast with other studies but to the modern warming that he found and was reporting:

“…from the first decade of the twentieth century to now, global average temperatures rose from near their coldest point since the ice age to nearly their warmest, Marcott and his team report today in Science.”

Swood1000

“What’s striking,” said lead author Shaun Marcott of Oregon State University in an interview, “is that the records we use are completely independent, and produce the same result.”

Wasn’t this “result” the demonstration of a contrast between the modern period and the earlier period?

Swood1000

…but I could understand setting the age uncertainty to zero for 1940.

The 1940 bin had three coretops using the original published dates. Marcott re-dated the two with negative values, MD01-2421 splice and OCE326-GGC30, which removed them from the 1940 bin. Then he added 5 coretops with original published dates earlier than AD10. For example, MD95-2043 had originally been dated 10th century. MD95-2011 and MD-2015 were re-dated by 510 and 690 years respectively. All of the re-dated additions to 1940 had positive values.

What leads you to understand setting the age uncertainty to zero for 1940?

The sedimentation rate between the final two radiocarbon points of MD95-2043 was 26.7 cm/kyr. The original authors (Cacho et al 1999; 2001) dated samples above the most recent radiocarbon date by assuming a continuation of these sedimentation rates, thus interpreting the top 14 cm as covering the period from 1537BP to a coretop of 1007.6 BP.

In contrast, Marcott et al 2013 dated the coretop to 0BP (1950 AD) and interpolated dates back to the radiocarbon date at 14 cm. In effect, Marcott et al presumed that the sedimentation had fallen to one-third of previously observed rates. The difference is shown in the graphic below, which compares the age-depth according to the original authors to the age-depth of Marcott et al. It shows that there is negligible difference between published and Marcott radiocarbon dates.

SkyHunter

Since the studies focus was the Holocene, not the 20th century, your fixation is first order evidence ofyour motivated reasoning.

Swood1000

Since the studies focus was the Holocene, not the 20th century…

The study focus was the comparison of the 20th century with the rest of the holocene.

Surface temperature reconstructions of the past 1500 years suggest that recent warming is unprecedented in that time. Here we provide a broader perspective by reconstructing regional and global temperature anomalies for the past 11,300 years from 73 globally distributed records.

And it is just this comparison that generates the news value of the study.

Your position is that since the data for the 20th century is so unimportant any person criticizing it must have some hidden motivation.

SkyHunter

Right, they compared their reconstruction with more recent reconstructions.

The fact remains, the uptick is real, the blade is real, and by looking at individual trees you can’t see the forest.

Swood1000

The fact remains, the uptick is real, the blade is real…

Tell me you’re just pretending not to understand that the issue here is not whether the modern warming is real, but whether it was displayed on the graph with more prominence than data from other periods was displayed.

SkyHunter

It was not.

SkyHunter

Here are the facts;

A) We know the Earth has warmed precipitously over the past century and a half, and shows no signs of cooling anytime soon. Even if it started to cool right now, it would still leave an unprecedented spike in the 300 year smoothed data.

B) We have multiple independent reconstructions of the past 2000 years and they are all hockey sticks.

C) Marcott 2013 extends the multi-proxy reconstructions back 11,000 years. Showing that the long term cooling trend abruptly ended with the industrial era. That would have been clear had they terminated the purple line in 1800, since they aligned it with Mann08 in the published graphics.

D) The nature of the reconstruction for temporal and spatial coverage limited the reconstruction to certain proxies, many of which did not extend into the recent period, which resulted in a warm bias for the final 500 years of the reconstruction and an anomalous uptick at the end.

E) There was no deception, they published the reconstruction as it was, queries were made as to why the uptick was out of sync, and now we know it is an artifact that doesn’t change or effect the overall conclusion. Global temperature excursions of this magnitude are not evident in the proxy data.

The motivations are not hidden. SM makes a living attacking the research of others. Your motivation is to confirm your belief. SM is very good at what he does. You are prima facia evidence of that.

Did you ever see how he mangled principal component analysis in his crusade to discredit Michael Mann?

So you reject all paleo-reconstructions that have a hockey stick shape in favor of a specious narrative by a propagandist for the mining industry?

Are we detecting a pattern here?

I linked the RealClimate article, the issue was thoroughly investigated by the NAS and the hockey stick was found to be the shape of the data. M&M could not reproduce MBH’s results because they improperly applied the PCA methodology used by Mann.

Swood1000

M&M could not reproduce MBH’s results because they improperly applied the PCA methodology used by Mann.

It is true that Mann refused to disclose his data and methods, which had to be reverse engineered, right? What’s the justification for that?

SkyHunter

It takes a carpenter to build a barn, any jackass can kick a hole in it.

When a jackass is trying to kick holes in your barn, you don’t help it.

Google Mann FOIA and the top hit is the Virginia Supreme Court ruling in his favor.

SM is a slime ball working for the mining industry. His act was old in 2004.

Gary Slabaugh

Amen

Swood1000

When a jackass is trying to kick holes in your barn, you don’t help it.

Well to be fair, Barton’s inquiry was characterized as an “illegitimate investigation”

Characterized by whom? Can you supply the quote? What makes a congressional investigation illegitimate?

SkyHunter

Sherwood Boehlert, the Chairman of the House Science Committee at the time.

He is an endangered species. A moderate Republican.

Swood1000

Well to be fair, Barton’s inquiry was characterized as an “illegitimate investigation”

Are you proposing a “characterization” war?

Swood1000

Google Mann FOIA and the top hit is the Virginia Supreme Court ruling in his favor.

Saying that “Data, records or information of a proprietary nature produced or collected by or for faculty or staff of public institutions of higher learning” is exempt from the Virginia FOIA hardly establishes a justification for refusing to disclose his methods. It just says that he has a right to keep them secret. But why is he so intent on keeping them secret even from a congressional committee? Most people realize that it is not because he does not want others to learn his incredible techniques but rather it is because his techniques will not stand the light of day.

SkyHunter

This was resolved years ago. This horse has no flesh left on the bones.

Swood1000

This was resolved years ago. This horse has no flesh left on the bones.

You already told me you didn’t want to get into the Mann hockey stick affair, so why did you lead us into it?

SkyHunter

Because it is reveals the same pattern of dishonesty by SM.

SkyHunter

Mann’s technique was new, it had some minor errors, which did not change the results when corrected. The technique did stand the light of day, it was included in but the TAR and 4AR reports.

Oh, and Wegman did validate M&M, but has refused to comment since their methodology was demonstrated to be wrong.

I guess he decided his reputation took a big enough hit already, so he is keeping his mouth shut and cashing his paycheck.

SkyHunter

And he did not keep them secret. That is another lie that is still being spread by slime ball.

Swood1000

SM is a slime ball working for the mining industry.

Is the mining industry disreputable?

SkyHunter

What does that have to do with anything?

He is paid to sell doubt to anyone willing to be duped. The way he does that makes him a slime ball.

The Mining industry is simply protecting it’s interests without regard for anything other than it’s own interests.

Whether or not that makes them disreputable is a matter of subjective opinion.

Swood1000

He is paid to sell doubt to anyone willing to be duped. The way he does that makes him a slime ball.

What is the best example you have of a concrete, specific, single assertion or act of his that demonstrates this?

SkyHunter

His attack on MBH98/99 is best example I can think of.

You are another example. You read his blog, you are confused about trivial details and he is the source of your confusion.

Swood1000

So you reject all paleo-reconstructions that have a hockey stick shape…

I think that it is only paleo-reconstructions that have hockey stick shapes built into them.

“The centering of the proxy series is a critical factor in using principal components methodology properly. It is not clear that Dr. Mann and his associates even realized that their methodology was faulty at the time of writing the MBH paper. The net effect of the decentering is to preferentially choose the so-called hockey stick shapes. …The ‘hockey stick’ reconstruction of temperature graphic dramatically illustrated the global warming issue and was adopted by the IPCC and many governments as the poster graphic. The graphics’ prominence together with the fact that it is based on incorrect use of PCA puts Dr. Mann and his co-authors in a difficult face-saving position. We have been to Michael Mann’s University of Virginia website and downloaded the materials there. Unfortunately, we did not find adequate material to reproduce the MBH98 materials.” http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/reprint/ad_hoc_report.pdf

SkyHunter

This is old news. Read Climate Wars by Michael Mann. Michael Mann is still a leading climate researcher, SM is still a lying shill for the mining industry.

Or do you believe that all of the world’s scientific institutions have either been deceived, or are part of scientific hoax?

Swood1000

“…the issue was thoroughly investigated by the NAS and the hockey stick was found to be the shape of the data.”

Do you have a reference for this? (I of course do not mean to imply that you yourself are not an adequate reference.)

Wikipedia is known for objectivity. Since anyone can challenge anything not cited, this page in particular has been distilled down to the objective facts.

Swood1000

Wikipedia is known for objectivity.

Literally LOL.

SkyHunter

You read ClimateAudit, and think Wikipedia is not objective????

ROFLMAO!!!

Swood1000

You read ClimateAudit, and think Wikipedia is not objective????

I know from long experience that Wikipedia is not objective on matters of this kind. But I will read the article and refresh my memory.

ROFLMAO!!!

Perhaps, but mine was literal and actual.

SkyHunter

Which tells me you don’t know what Wikipedia is.

Swood1000

Which tells me you don’t know what Wikipedia is.

True or false: Wikipedia is a bastion of even-handedness.

SkyHunter

Wikipedia is a crowd sourced encyclopedia.

If you don’t believe it is objective, show some examples.

Swood1000

Let me read the article.

Swood1000

Wikipedia is known for objectivity. Since anyone can challenge anything not cited, this page in particular has been distilled down to the objective facts.

On politically sensitive questions, Wikipedia is controlled by which side (a) has the most people willing to spend all their time maintaining a vigil over their favorite subjects and immediately removing entries they don’t like, and (b) has the most people in authoritative positions to support them.

SkyHunter

The narrative is controlled by the facts as cited. Not a perfect system, but certainly an objective one.

Swood1000

I’m still considering the Wikipedia article, but let me point out an example of the kind of thing I’m talking about. The article contains this statement:

“McIntyre and McKitrick said that they had not been able to replicate the Mann, Bradley and Hughes results due to problems with the data: although the sparse data for the earlier periods was difficult to analyse, their criticism was comprehensively refuted by Wahl & Ammann 2007.”

“Refute” is defined as “to prove to be false or erroneous.” So it is not the same as “dispute” or “argue against.” It refers to an argument that has been conclusively proven to be victorious.

Is it the place of an encyclopedia to make such a statement concerning a matter that is in dispute? For example, this response was made to Wahl & Ammann, and it was not the only one holding that opinion. The most that can be said is that in the opinion of certain people, some of them perhaps quite exalted, McIntyre and McKitrick were refuted. But where is the authority for saying that it was conclusive?

And who was the Wikipedia source for that? It was this web site which, on its main page, describes itself as

“A hypertext history of how scientists came to (partly) understand what people are doing to cause climate change.”

So, a partisan website is the source for the statement that their own side refuted the other side.

If you believe that this is even-handed then you really have drunk the Kool-Aid.

SkyHunter

You mean it was still being disputed by SM, the rest of the world moved on.

Swood1000

Is this an example of even-handed treatment?

SkyHunter

Yes. SM was wrong. His refusal to admit it is why no one takes him seriously anymore.

Swood1000

I see. Let me see if I have this right. A congressional committee reported that “…the criticisms of McIntyre and McKitrick…are indeed valid.” The NAS did a study after which the chairman of the NAS committee said about the congressional committee report “We don’t disagree with their criticism. In fact, pretty much the same thing is said in our report.”

The NAS report also said:

“Regarding metrics used in the validation step in the reconstruction exercise, two issues have been raised (McIntyre and McKitrick 2003, 2005a,b). One is that the choice of “significance level” for the reduction of error (RE) validation statistic is not appropriate. The other is that different statistics, specifically the coefficient of efficiency (CE) and the squared correlation (r2), should have been used (the various validation statistics are discussed in Chapter 9). Some of these criticisms are more relevant than others, but taken together, they are an important aspect of a more general finding of this committee, which is that uncertainties of the published reconstructions have been underestimated.”

“The possibility that increasing tree ring widths in modern times might be driven by increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations, rather than increasing temperatures, was first proposed by LaMarche et al. (1984) for bristlecone pines (Pinus longaeva) in the White Mountains of California. In old age, these trees can assume a “stripbark” form, characterized by a band of trunk that remains alive and continues to grow after the rest of the stem has died. Such trees are sensitive to higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations (Graybill and Idso 1993), possibly because of greater water-use efficiency (Knapp et al. 2001, Bunn et al. 2003) or different carbon partitioning among tree parts (Tang et al. 1999). …”strip-bark’ samples should be avoided for temperature reconstructions…”

“McIntyre and McKitrick (2003) demonstrated that under some conditions, the leading principal component can exhibit a spurious trendlike appearance, which could then lead to a spurious trend in the proxy-based reconstruction.”

“…the choice of “significance level” for the reduction of error (RE) validation statistic is not appropriate.”

“Moreover, a CE statistic close to zero or negative suggests that the reconstruction is no better than the mean, and so its skill for time averages shorter than the validation period will be low. Some recent results reported in Table 1S of Wahl and Ammann (in press) indicate that their reconstruction, which uses the same procedure and full set of proxies used by Mann et al. (1999), gives CE values ranging from 0.103 to -0.215, depending on how far back in time the reconstruction is carried.”

The NAS report also said that since Bristlecone records are sensitive to a variety of environmental conditions other than temperature they should be avoided for climate reconstructions, that Mann’s results strongly depend on the bristlecone records, and that they are therefore not robust (apart from the lack of statistical significance):

The more important aspect of this criticism is the issue of robustness with respect to the choice of proxies used in the reconstruction. For periods prior to the 16th century, the Mann et al. (1999) reconstruction that uses this particular principal component analysis technique is strongly dependent on data from the Great Basin region in the western United States. Such issues of robustness need to be taken into account in estimates of statistical uncertainties.

“As part of their statistical methods, Mann et al. used a type of principal component analysis that tends to bias the shape of the reconstructions.” The Report even included its own graphical replication of the artificial hockey stick effect from feeding red noise into Mann’s algorithm.

Are you saying that, in your opinion, a fair and even-handed summary of the above is that the criticisms of McKitrick and McIntyre were “comprehensively refuted”?

SkyHunter

That is not a conclusion that SM is right, that Mann used PCA to produce a hockey stick, just that it is possible to use PCA improperly.

The only real negative conclusion of the committee was that Mann underestimated the uncertainty. A point that has been moot for some time now.

Which brings us back to my point. SM falsely accused Mann of scientific fraud/incompetence and lost. Which is why SM is an infamous denier and Mann is a famous scientist.

Swood1000

The only real negative conclusion of the committee was that Mann underestimated the uncertainty. A point that has been moot for some time now.

Why is this moot?

SM falsely accused Mann of scientific fraud/incompetence and lost.

Excuse me, but when a congressional committee says that SM’s criticisms are valid, and the NAS committee doesn’t disagree with them and says pretty much the same thing in their report, then can you point out to me where SM “lost”?

SkyHunter

It is moot because subsequent research has validated results. Even if they overstated the confidence based on their results, the results themselves have been subsequently validated.

Which exact criticisms were valid?

The PCA does not always produce a hockey stick, only under certain conditions. So half his criticism was valid.

The point is, the congressional committee is just a tool for the owners of the government. Joe Barton refused to work with the NAS, hired Wegman, who is now an utter disgrace after it was found that he plagiarized part of the report.

Now you want to take a few statements out of context as validation of SM’s false accusations.

The bottom line after all was said and done; SM was exposed for a fraud, and Michael Mann went on to become one of the worlds foremost climatologists.

Swood1000

It is moot because subsequent research has validated results.

I am seeing a pattern here. If scientist A uses inappropriate procedures he cannot be faulted for that if scientist B is able to confirm his results using proper procedures. Where have we seen this before? Oh yes, Marcott. Is that really a part of your belief system?

SkyHunter

No procedure is perfect. Like Marcott’s reconstruction, this was a first of it’s kind. Mann took the NAS critique seriously and improved on his initial effort. That is how science works. The unknown is always there, science is how we make the unknown smaller.

The pattern you are seeing is professional deniers exploiting this fact to cast doubt on any and all science that might hamper their employer’s ability to make a profit.

Swood1000

No procedure is perfect. Like Marcott’s reconstruction, this was a first of it’s kind. Mann took the NAS critique seriously and improved on his initial effort. That is how science works. The unknown is always there, science is how we make the unknown smaller.

Fine, then call Mann’s study what it is. But don’t go saying that criticisms of the study were comprehensively refuted simply because another study claimed to have gotten the same result, and in the next breath claim a right for the deficiencies of the study to be overlooked because it was a pioneering study and everybody makes mistakes.

SkyHunter

Their criticism was thoroughly refuted. The hockey stick is the shape of the data, not a spurious trend from improper weighting of the variance.

If M&M had admitted as much it would not be an issue. They clung to their discredited belief and now they have no credibility.

Swood1000

Well, it’s probably time to just agree about our disagreements with respect to Marcott and move on. The following represent what I understand to be your position on various points, although since you refused to respond to many of them initially I am not optimistic that you will do so now.

1. It is true that “…one should be careful in comparing recent decades to early parts of their reconstruction, as one can easily fall into the trap of comparing a single year or decade to what is essentially an average of centuries.” However, this is not a trap that readers of the journal Science will fall into.

4. Marcott was quoted as follows, “What we found is that temperatures increased in the last 100 years as much as they had cooled in the last 6,000 or 7,000,” he said. “In other words, the rate of change is much greater than anything we’ve seen in the whole Holocene,” referring to the current geologic time period, which began around 11,500 years ago. http://grist.org/climate-energy/a-bigger-badder-climate-hockey-stick/ This does not encourage others to compare recent decades to early parts of his reconstruction, nor is it contradicted by Marcott saying that “the 20th century portion of our paleotemperature stack is not statistically robust, cannot be considered representative of global temperature changes, and therefore is not the basis of any of our conclusions.”

5. The uptick was fragile, very doubtful, and unreliable, but this is not misleading since it was discernable by those knowledgeable in statistics and in paleo reconstructions who carefully read the study.

6. When, in the study, a different procedure for the 20th century portion was shown to produce a different result, and the difference was termed “not robust,” this did not imply that the procedure decided upon was robust.

7. It is “of course” true that actual temperature X in one part of a graph should not appear to be higher or lower than the same temperature in another part of the same graph. However, this rule is not violated if the temperatures are represented by different lines, even though no clear explanation is present.

8. The uptick arose from re-dating core tops. Despite the sensitivity of the study to core top re-dating, there is no problem with changing the dates without presenting any evidence that this was justified, or even announcing that this was being done, even though it had been explicitly said that original dates were being used unless otherwise mentioned.

9. If one wishes to show how stark and unique is the 20th century rise in temperature, it is legitimate to do so by constructing a graph on which all the high frequency temperature variability prior to the 20th century is suppressed, resulting in a flat line showing little variation, but the temperature variability of the 20th century is not suppressed, showing the actual real temperature rise.

Swood1000

That is not a conclusion that SM is right, that Mann used PCA to produce a hockey stick, just that it is possible to use PCA improperly.

But you would say that it does show that McKitrick and McIntyre were “comprehensively refuted”?

SkyHunter

Yes it does. They claim that the reconstruction was an artifact of the PCA methodology. The NAS report concludes otherwise.

M&M claimed that MBH misused PCA, but all they proved was that it was possible, not that it was actual. So they were comprehensively refuted, since the NAS concluded that:

The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes both additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators, such as melting on ice caps and the retreat of glaciers around the world, which in many cases appear to be unprecedented during at least the last 2,000 years. Not all individual proxy records indicate that the recent warmth is unprecedented, although a larger fraction of geographically diverse sites experienced exceptional warmth during the late 20th century than during any other extended period from A.D. 900 onward.

Swood1000

This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence…

Yes, indeed. This is definitely turning into a pattern. A accuses B of using improper procedures. Many of B’s procedures are found to have been improper. However this is of no importance because B’s results were confirmed by C, thereby refuting all of A’s accusations.

SkyHunter

A never proved that B’s procedure was improperly applied. End of story.

Swood1000

A never proved that B’s procedure was improperly applied. End of story.

The criticism of PCA was considered a valid criticism, which is one reason it is not used anymore. But they were wrong that it caused a spurious trend in MBH98/99.

Proving that something an happen is not the same as proving it did.

Swood1000

Proving that something an happen is not the same as proving it did.

Trouble deciphering this.

The criticism of PCA was considered a valid criticism, which is one reason it is not used anymore. But they were wrong that it caused a spurious trend in MBH98/99.

If it was a valid criticism then all of MM’s criticisms were not comprehensively refuted. What part of this is not clear?

SkyHunter

They continue to claim that their study invalidates MBH98/99. It does not. That his been comprehensively refuted. They did not reproduce Mann’s results and claimed it was because Mann withheld information. The fact that others were able to reproduce The results from the published material.

They were amateurs stumbling around in the dark who discovered a possible problem with PCA.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day, that is no reason to rely on it for the over 23 hours and 58 minutes.

Swood1000

They continue to claim that their study invalidates MBH98/99. It does not. That his been comprehensively refuted.

But that is far different from saying that all their criticisms were comprehensively refuted. The latter is not true, is it?

The fact that others were able to reproduce The results from the published material.

Who reproduced the results?

SkyHunter

Zorita et al., and Wahl and Ammann for another.

Wahl and Ammann demonstrated why CE was a poor validation metric to judge MBH98/99. The opposite conclusion of the clown show.

Swood1000

Let me just be sure. Is this the same Zorita who wrote on his website:

“Why I think that Michael Mann, Phil Jones and Stefan Rahmstorf should be barred from the IPCC process

“Short answer: because the scientific assessments in which they may take part are not credible anymore.”

Well I will watch that (looks like over an hour). Does he contradict his statement that the NAS committee found “pretty much the same thing” as the Congressional committee?

SkyHunter

No, he refrains from expressing his opinion of Wegman. He does point out the difference between the two, and considers congressional hearings to be jokes.

He does state that SM was right about improper weighting of PCs, but that it made no difference in the overall results.

Swood1000

But M&M’s criticism was not valid, the hockey stick is not a spurious trend from improperly weighting the variance in the principal component.

Can you affirm that you recognize the distinction between:

1. asserting that the procedures were improper
2. asserting that without the faulty procedures the finding of the study would not have been reached.

And can you affirm that a finding that assertion #2 is false is not a finding that assertion #1 is false.

Also can you affirm that you agree that if there are two criticisms and one is found to have merit it cannot be said that all criticisms were comprehensively refuted?

SkyHunter

The spurious trend comes from improper weighting of the principal components.

They never demonstrated that Mann’s procedure was improper. They demonstrated that it could be used improperly. So the second assertion was invalid on it’s face.

They were given credit for their valid criticism, and ridiculed for their insistence it means something it does not.

Swood1000

Is the following an accurate description of one of the things that the NAS Committee found?

1. Reconstructions can be assessed using a
variety of tests, including RE, and the CE (Coefficient of Efficiency) scores.

2. If the CE score is near zero or negative your model is junk.

3. Wahl and Ammann include a Table in which they use Mann’s data and code and compute the test scores that he didn’t report.

4. The CE scores range from near zero to
negative, which tells us that Mann’s results were junk.

SkyHunter

No.

Swood1000

Is the following a direct quote from the NAS Report, affirming that items 1 and 2 are true?

“Reconstructions that have poor validation statistics (i.e., low CE) will have correspondingly wide uncertainty bounds, and so can be seen to be unreliable in an objective way. Moreover, a CE statistic close to zero or negative suggests that the reconstruction is no better than the mean, and so its skill for time averages shorter than the validation period will be low.”

Is the following a direct quote from the NAS Report, affirming that item 3 is true?

“Some recent results reported in Table 1S of Wahl and Ammann (in press) indicate that their reconstruction, which uses the same procedure and full set of proxies used by Mann et al. (1999), gives CE values ranging from 0.103 to –0.215, depending on how far back in time the reconstruction is carried.”

SkyHunter

Don’t stop there, continue…

“Although some debate has focused on when a validation statistic, such as CE or RE, is significant, a more meaningful approach may be to concentrate on the implied prediction intervals for a given reconstruction. Even a low CE value may still provide prediction intervals that are useful for drawing particular scientific conclusions.”

And as I mentioned earlier, the reference to Table 1S is to a paper by Wahl and Ammann, where they are demonstrating why CE is not a good validation metric.

Swood1000

“Reconstructions that have poor validation statistics (i.e., low CE) will have correspondingly wide uncertainty bounds, and so can be seen to be unreliable in an objective way. Moreover, a CE statistic close to zero or negative suggests that the reconstruction is no better than the mean, and so its skill for time averages shorter than the validation period will be low.”

Do you agree that the NAS Report stated the above as a general rule? They said that a CE statistic close to zero or negative suggests that the reconstruction is no better than the mean. It does not infallibly indicate that. The burden would then be on the person who is asserting an exception to the general rule, to demonstrate which “particular scientific conclusions” can still be drawn, correct?

Right after this they refer to Bürger and Cubasch (2005) whose paper suggests that “selecting a reconstruction based on its CE value could be a useful way to winnow the choices for the reconstruction.” So the exception is surrounded by two statements of support for the value of the CE.

Furthermore, if the M&M accusation was that MBH fails verification r2 and CE tests, and it in fact does fail such tests, is it a “refutation” to say that the tests are not valid?

Did they say in MBH98 that the reconstruction failed the r2 and CE test, but that this didn’t “matter”? If they had, how do you think it would have affected the credibility of their study?

Swood1000

They never demonstrated that Mann’s procedure was improper. They demonstrated that it could be used improperly. So the second assertion was invalid on it’s face.

It is your position that not one of Mann’s procedures was faulty? You are backing away from your “No procedure is perfect” statement?

Swood1000

The only real negative conclusion of the committee was that Mann underestimated the uncertainty.

Isn’t “underestimated the uncertainty” a euphemism for “they said their findings were robust but they were not” and “the study failed the standard tests that are relied on to show that a study’s findings are statistically significant, but this was not reported in the study (although such tests were referred to in the study as if they had been passed), nor did the authors even suggest that such tests were not applicable until after accusations by M&M began.”

In fact isn’t it the “uncertainty” of the findings that is the most important aspect of a study? What good is the most glorious finding if it was no better than a random result?

SkyHunter

Why parse words if you are not trying to make the facts conform to your belief. By underestimating the uncertainty, there assertion that the 1990’s were the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year, could not be stated with confidence for the entire period of the reconstruction.

They did conclude however, based on all the evidence, IE not just the weak spot where a jackass kicked a hole, but the whole barn, that MBH98/99 was a significant contribution, was robust, even if over-stated, and they made recommendations for improvements in the future. Recommendations that were followed through on, producing results that do confidently show that the modern warming is unprecedented in the last 1500 years.

No one had discovered the possibility of spurious trends in PCA before, because no one was deliberately trying to create them. Then a jackass shows up looking for a weak spot in the barn and finds one. Since the principal components were not being improperly weighted, this criticism is not applicable to Mann’s reconstruction. It is however a matter for consideration, but since most scientists, including Mann had abandoned PCA for other methodologies by this time, the point was pretty much moot.

SM could have taken his moment and been a wild mustang, instead he chose to be true to his nature. He is still a jackass.

Swood1000

Why parse words if you are not trying to make the facts conform to your belief.

Not following this.

By underestimating the uncertainty, there assertion that the 1990’s were the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year, could not be stated with confidence for the entire period of the reconstruction.

The NAS was saying that Mann was more confident in his findings than he was entitled to be, right?

No one had discovered the possibility of spurious trends in PCA before, because no one was deliberately trying to create them.

But a different criticism was that he should not have been using the Bristlecones at all. The NAS found that this kind of data should not be used in this this type of research (as also stated by Graybill and Idso, who originated the data), and that his study was “strongly dependent” on this data.

Didn’t M&M show that when the Bristlecone proxies were removed the hockey stick shape went away? In fact, wasn’t a Mann folder found with the Bristlecones removed, showing that Mann had himself discovered this dependency?

“For the r² statistic, statistically insignificant values (or any gridpoints with unphysical values of correlation r , 0) are indicated in grey. The colour scale indicates values significant at the 90% (yellow), 99% (light red) and 99.9% (dark red) levels (these significance levels are slightly higher for the calibration statistics which are based on a longer period of time).”

However M&M stated:

“Our own calculations, reported in McIntyre and McKitrick, 2005a, showed that, in the 15th century step, the period in controversy, far from the verification r² statistic confirming seemingly high values of the RE statistic, values were extremely low (~0), which we interpreted as contradicting claims for statistical skill for the MBH98 model. We are unable to conceive of any situation where an index with true statistical relationship to temperature has such a catastrophic failure of the r² test.”

M&M also said that

“However, while the RE statistic was archived for all steps, the verification r² statistic was not archived in the original Supplementary Information at Nature (now deleted.)”

Does it not seem that MBH98 was implying falsely that the r² statistic was lending support to the “highly significant reconstructive skill” that they claimed for their reconstruction? In what aspect of this particular issue are M&M to be criticized?

Swood1000

They did conclude however…that MBH98/99 was…robust

I saw the places where the NAS Report talked about the lack of robustness. For example:

“The more important aspect of this criticism is the issue of robustness with respect to the choice of proxies used in the reconstruction. For periods prior to the 16th century, the Mann et al. (1999) reconstruction that uses this particular principal component analysis technique is strongly dependent on data from the Great Basin region in the western United States. Such issues of robustness need to be taken into account in estimates of statistical uncertainties.”

and

“Temperature reconstructions for periods before about A.D. 1600 are based on proxies from a limited number of geographic regions, and some reconstructions are not robust with respect to the removal of proxy records from individual regions…”

Could you point me to the part where they say that nevertheless, overall it was robust?

Swood1000

Here is the NAS report.

You wouldn’t happen to have a specific page, would you?

SkyHunter

Read the WIKI first and you will understand the background. Then if you still want to defend slime ball, I will delve into the massive amounts of related documentation.

The bottom line is this. MBH98/99 is still considered a major first, it’s results have held up over time, and Mann is still one the foremost climatologists on the planet.

SM is still a jackass trying to kick holes in hockey sticks.

Swood1000

…the issue was thoroughly investigated by the NAS and the hockey stick was found to be the shape of the data.

Right. The NAS found that because of the procedures in use the hockey stick was found to be the shape even of red noise data.

McIntyre and McKitrick (2003) demonstrated that under some conditions the leading principal component can exhibit a spurious trendlike appearance, which could then lead to a spurious trend in the proxy-based reconstruction. …Figure 9-2 shows the result of a simple simulation along the lines of McIntyre and McKitrick (2003) (the computer code appears in Appendix B). …The first eigenvector of the covariance matrix for this simulation is the red curve in Figure 9-2, showing the precise form of the spurious trend that the principal component would introduce into the fitted model in this case.”

SkyHunter

Chapter nine is an educational chapter, they used M&M’s criticism to demonstrate how the PCA can be improperly weighted and show a false trend. They do not conclude that this is the case with MBH98/99, in fact the committee concludes the opposite, since they VALIDATED MBH98/99.

Swood1000

since they VALIDATED MBH98/99

I see. Is this another conclusion for which you offer no documentary support but suggest that I find such support on my own?

SkyHunter

I gave you a link to the NAS paper. Read their conclusions, not just the parts that you think validate your position.

Swood1000

Would a conclusion that there has been global warming be a validation of MBH98/99?

SkyHunter

No, the conclusion that MBH did reproduce the last 1000 year NH surface temperature accurately.

Swood1000

You are saying that any and every form of scientific error, negligence or intention misconduct is validated if the findings of the study are correct.

SkyHunter

Why the need for extreme examples?

You keep applying extreme generalities as if this about some greater issue.

MBH98/99 was validated by thorough analysis of the study. M&M’s criticisms regarding the robustness of the proxies and PCA were valid, but not significant. They only effected the confidence of the results, not the results.

Swood1000

You keep applying extreme generalities as if this about some greater issue.

Well, you keep saying that a study has been validated if its results turn out to have been correct, as if all criticisms are thereby shown to have been false.

And I keep replying that there can be an invalid study, for example one performed by somebody without any training whatsoever, and the fact that its findings are correct does not validate the study.

If you want to say that the findings of MBH98/99 were validated then that is a different matter.

SkyHunter

If SM will stop claiming he proved the hockeystick was broken, I will continue to acknowledge his contribution and stop characterizing his conclusions as entirely false.

Swood1000

I’ll talk it over with SM but I don’t think he’s going to go for it.

SkyHunter

“The NAS found that because of the procedures in use the hockey stick was the shape of many kinds of data, even of red noise data.”

That is false. They agreed that under some conditions it can happen, not that it did happen in MBH98/99.

An important distinction don’t you think?

Swood1000

That is false. They agreed that under some conditions it can happen, not that it did happen in MBH98/99.

An important distinction don’t you think?

They said:

As part of their statistical methods, Mann et al. used a type of principal component analysis that tends to bias the shape of the reconstructions.

And your point would be that a person who uses a method that tends to bias the shape of reconstructions cannot be faulted unless it can be proven that the shape of the reconstruction had actually been biased. And if that can’t be shown because the scientist refuses to disclose his data and methods, then that objection can be ignored. And you are correct that the NAS report said that there was no evidence that it did bias the reconstruction. So much for that.

The report went on to say:

“The more important aspect of this criticism is the issue of robustness with respect to the choice of proxies used in the reconstruction.”

SkyHunter

And the report concluded that the reconstruction was robust, just not as robust as the authors thought. Even that criticism is now moot, since the confidence while over-stated was indeed well paced.

It is still the Wegman report, which does not confirm SM’s abuse of PCA.

The Wegman Report did not confirm that SM abused PCA?

SkyHunter

The Wegman report was a hit piece commissioned by the chief apologist to the oil industry, Texas Joe Barton.

Wegman and two of his grad students looked at Mann’s methodology, found some minor errors that did not significantly effect the overall results, and recommended that scientists could benefit from working more closely with statisticians.

They did not confirm that SM’s accusations were correct, as the cherry-picked quote from North implies.

Swood1000

The Wegman report was a hit piece…

With the conclusions of which the North Report agreed…

SkyHunter

Right, they found errors, which when corrected did not change the results in any discernible way. The North report also agreed that paleoclimatologists could benefit from a closer working relationship with statisticians.

Ammann and Wahl showed that the hockey stick remains after the errors are corrected.

Wegman has been silent since his belief in M&M was shown to be misplaced. Wegman has also refused to share his code, so no one knows how he arrived at the conclusion he did.

Swood1000

Global temperature excursions of this magnitude are not evident in the proxy data.

The second is all Marcott proxies, expressed as anomalies about their most recent 2,000 years of record. Black line shows 401-point Gaussian average. N=9,288.

Not only are anomalies evident, but when one proxy shows rising temperatures for ten thousand years and another shows dropping temperatures for ten thousand years, what does any kind of average of those two tell us? That the temperature was rising seven degrees while it was falling nine degrees?

SkyHunter

It tells us that regional climate dominates natural climate trends. Which is another reason why the nearly synchronous warming of the past 150 years is unprecedented in 11,000 years.

Swood1000

There was no deception…

As long as one does not consider misrepresentation a form of deception.

“Surface temperature reconstructions of the past 1500 years suggest that recent warming is unprecedented in that time.”

“What we found is that temperatures increased in the last 100 years as much as they had cooled in the last 6,000 or 7,000…”

“Thus, the 20th century portion of our paleotemperature stack is not statistically robust, cannot be considered representative of global temperature changes, and therefore is not the basis of any of our conclusions.”

SkyHunter

Exactly. The study does not exist in a vacuum. The findings are robust for the periods of interest and confirm previous findings that suggest the modern warming is unprecedented in the Holocene.

SkyHunter

Telford said the core top re-dating was a necessary step. Now that you realize your misunderstanding of the displayed resolution of the purple line, you are moving on to a different argument to confirm your belief in Steve McIntyre, or lack of belief in Shaun Marcott.

If you take away the uptick on the purple line, truncating it at 1850, you still have a hockey stick when you contrast it with the 1500 and 2000 year reconstructions of higher resolution. That is the shape of the data. A 300 year smoothing applied to the modern uptick, assuming we have reached the peak, and temperatures decline for the next 150 years, would still be a 0.5ºC jump in the purple line 300 years from now.

It may be possible that the authors published the uptick, knowing it was an artifact deliberately, in order to get the attention of the deniersphere, but I highly doubt it. Intentional or not, it worked. Nowadays, if a researcher does his/her reputation smeared on the denier blogs, their work is probably not impactful.

Swood1000

Now that you realize your misunderstanding of the displayed resolution of the purple line, you are moving on to a different argument…

I never did have an understanding of how they were able to get a period of 100 years to show up on the graph after saying that any events shorter than 300 years would not show up.

Now it appears that they used a technique that depended on (a) removing the negative proxies from the 1940 period by re-dating them, (b) re-dating proxies with positive values to the present, some of which had originally been dated at 1000 years ago in published studies by competent scientists, (c) setting the age-uncertainty to zero for the re-dated proxies moved into the 1940 period, and (d) applying a statistical that allowed them to refrain from averaging these modern records over centuries, as had to be done to all the other records, allowing these records to show up with prominence on the graph. The best that can be said is that it was way to produce a misleading graph in a way that could withstand scrutiny (but they still felt safer refusing to disclose what their actual methods and procedures were).

However they did it, it doesn’t change the fundamental fact that the proxies for the recent period represent a single year or decade, and are being compared with an average of centuries. That part is not in dispute. Your point, apparently, is that there is nothing wrong with presenting a misleading graph as long as only the general public is misled. But it wasn’t just the general public who was misled. The NewScientist said

This also compares a single year or decade to an average of centuries in a way that you said no competent scientist would do.

The graph was misleading. You say that those to whom it was addressed were not misled but why do you refuse to address the fact that at least two prominent scientific journals reported exactly the thing that was misleading: the comparison of a single year or decade to an average of centuries.

It may be possible that the authors published the uptick, knowing it was an artifact deliberately, in order to get the attention of the deniersphere, but I highly doubt it.

Of course they were not trying to get the attention of the deniersphere. They were trying to get the attention of the general public. Marcott wanted to be a media star, with all the benefits that come with that, not the least of which being greatly increased ease of funding. He said:

“What we found is that temperatures increased in the last 100 years as much as they had cooled in the last 6,000 or 7,000,” he said. “In other words, the rate of change is much greater than anything we’ve seen in the whole Holocene,” referring to the current geologic time period, which began around 11,500 years ago. http://grist.org/climate-energy/a-bigger-badder-climate-hockey-stick/

and you apparently are saying that this does not encourage the comparison of a single year or decade to an average of centuries. Is that your position?

If you take away the uptick on the purple line, truncating it at 1850, you still have a hockey stick when you contrast it with the 1500 and 2000 year reconstructions of higher resolution.

You are talking about comparing high res data with low res? Why is that justified?!

That is the shape of the data. A 300 year smoothing applied to the modern uptick, assuming we have reached the peak, and temperatures decline for the next 150 years, would still be a 0.5ºC jump in the purple line 300 years from now.

You are saying that we can take your word for it that the present warming will continue for hundreds of years and so what is a single year or decade should be treated as 300 years, but the fact is that it hasn’t lasted for 300 years and so it can’t be treated that way.

Please respond to the assertion Marcott encouraged the comparison of a single year or decade to an average of centuries, and that scientific journals bought into it and through them so did the general public.

SkyHunter

You don’t see the irony.

The modern warming, even if it stopped right now and cooled for the next 150 years, would still be a 0.5°C spike on the purple line.

All the specious nonsense SM can muster does not change that fact.

Swood1000

In other words, although it is said that any event lasting for less than 300 years will not be noticeable you argue that the last 100 years, since it will last for over 300 years, is entitled to be treated as if it already had lasted for 300 years.

SkyHunter

The Earth has warmed nearly 1°C since 1860. It would need to cool at twice that rate during the next 150 years to keep the 300 year average below 0.25°C. The MWP was nowhere near that warm an event.

adrianvance

As usual, your “facts” are wobbly and your math sucks. If Earth cools at twice the rate the restoration will take half the time. “Duh!” The fact of the matter is that we are in a cooling trend.